Creating Your Handy Guide to the Anxiety Disorders

Poor GAD Stick Man. 

This past week you picked up supplies for a project to be completed by April 1 (Tuesday). The project requires you to come up with an alternative to the DSM section on Anxiety Disorders, ideally one less "clinical" sounding and more accessible to the average person on the street. Feel free to explore any themes or gimmicks that might make your manual sell: color schemes, co-opting existing popular book titles, etc.

You might find these links helpful:

• Directions for your project.
• Info about anxiety disorders and diagnostic criteria (from DSM-IV-TR).
• Highlights of changes from DSM-IV-TR to DSM-5.

Sweet Dreams - States of Consciousness Activities for Spring Break

We've spent the last several days learning about States of Consciousness and the stages of sleep. Over break, you've got a few of things to do. Thankfully, most of them involve or are connected to sleeping, which I hope was a part of your plans anyway. :)

You'll want to finish these three things for Monday (March 24):

1. Finish your Sleep Monitoring Form from the National Sleep Foundation. We will be looking at your results when you return, and you will have a chance to evaluate the quality of your sleep habits and explore ways to make improvements (if you decide they are needed). 
2. You'll also need to complete these Reading Questions from Chapter 7. You will take your Chapter 7 Quiz upon returning from break, and completing this activity should help you prepare.
3. Finally, if you were absent on Friday, March 14, you'll want to view the video embedded below: What Are Dreams? In class, we were able to almost complete this video and its accompanying viewing questions. We'll finish the last few minutes (10-15) when we return from break.

Note: If you were absent during the days leading up to Spring Break, you'll probably also want to make  sure you've obtained the notes from those days, which are embedded below for your convenience.

What Are Dreams?

Slides from States of Consciousness Unit (if you were absent)

Social Cognitive Perspective Resources

Since I will be away at a meeting on Monday morning, I'm posting my video notes/lecture here for the benefit of hours 1-3, who will be watching this in class. Links for other aspects of the lesson are here as well.

Video Notes: Social Cognitive Perspective


Surprise Party Sue


FREAKIN' EXCITED SUE from Lilián López Camberos on Vimeo.

(Optional) Big Brother

Prepping for Your Personality Unit Test

Okay, that went fast. On Tuesday, you'll be taking your unit test on Personality Theories. As a warning, this can be a tricky unit for students. Part of the challenge is simply mastering the vocabulary, but this unit has the additional obstacle of having to know which vocabulary and core ideas go with each of five approaches that you learned about in class. For example, it is important to know what the MMPI-2 is, but it is just as important to know that the MMPI-2 is based on Trait Theory (and, thus, would not be the first assessment tool of choice for a psychoanalyst or a humanistic psychotherapist).

So, as always, I've got some things tools to help you out. In addition to the printed study guide you got in class, you might want to try out these:

• Online Practice MC Items

Quizlet Flashcards



Class Notes: This is the slide show we have used for this unit (or, at least, its present incarnation). If you were absent on Friday because of the Blood Drive (or anything else), it may be helpful to know that we got through Slide 34. We will be learning about the last perspective, Social Cognitive, tomorrow in class.

Big 5 Inventory

Trait theorists tend to rely on objective-style personality assessments and inventories to make determinations about personality. For tomorrow, I'd like you to try out a very brief version of one of these, a Big-Five Inventory. It should only take a few minutes, and we'll discuss your results tomorrow in class.

You can record your results on this form, and there are a couple of additional reflection questions for your consideration as well. Have fun!

Freud-tastic Friday

This past Friday, AP Psych students delved deeply into Freudian theory. After learning about his 3-part model of the Psyche, his controversial stages of Psychosexual Development, and beginning to explore defense mechanisms, I think students are beginning to understand why modern psychologists have a love-hate relationship with Freud.

Since we had quite a few folks who were absent on Friday for various reasons, I'm posting some of the resources we used in class below. Keep in mind the slides will continue to be updated as we progress through this unit.

NOTE: If you picked up a worksheet on Defense Mechanisms from me because of a planned absence on Friday, be aware that I decided not to hand it out to my classes on Friday. They weren't quite ready for it yet. So, don't hurt yourself trying to finish that thing, as you'll have until Tuesday to finish it.

Slides from 2/26-2/28


Also, I was able to find a playlist of the Freud documentary that I normally show in class (when snow days haven't forced revisions to my lesson plans). I've embedded it below here for your (optional) viewing fun!

Studying for Your Motivation & Emotion Test

It's hard to believe it's already time for your unit test on Motivation & Emotion, and that feeling of disbelief is no doubt magnified by the fact that we've had such a disrupted school calendar as of late (Thanks, winter weather!). But Tuesday will be here quite soon.

We will be using Monday's class period to do some reviewing, something I typically don't devote much class time to, since I feel my students should be learning how to do their reviewing and studying outside of class in preparation for college-level work. However, given that you've been forced into learning a good chunk of this unit's content via the Internet because of our snow days, I really do feel a review day is in order.

As planned, I'll also be hosting a scheduled review session this evening (Sunday) from 5-7 PM, and I'll be available after school on Monday from 4 -6 PM to answer any questions you might have.

As always, there are online review tools at your disposal in order to aid your review, including:

• Quizlet Flashcards for Chapter 12 (Motivation) and Chapter 13 (Emotion + some Stress/Health stuff from Ch. 14). 
• Online Practice Tests on Motivation & Emotion
• Lots of Topic-Specific Review Resources (videos, websites) on the Study Resources Page.