"It's All About Psychology"

Starting the year off, it is often difficult to get into a subject in which you have no background whatsoever. Psychology is not like that at all. Even if you don't think you know anything about it, many of the things that are discussed in class are things that you either do, experience, or think about already.

If you've ever gotten a test or assignment back and thought, "I knew that" after being presented with the correct answer, that's called hindsight bias. In addition to putting names to concepts that you already know about, we try and mix it up and do some fun/silly things every now and then.

We have only gotten through two chapters, but we have already had a rap battle and created visual representations of different parts of the brain. The purpose of both of these projects was to use alternative methods to get information to the entire class. 

The rap battle, in which I did participate myself (not well though), was designed to explain the endocrine system glands in a more enjoyable way than simple repetition. By having to think about how to work what their group's gland did and what the opponent group's gland did, students became very familiar with the purpose of the entire endocrine system aka the system responsible for most hormones in our bodies. 

As part of the chapter two assessment the students broke up into groups and created visual representations of different parts of the brain and nervous system. The presentations ranged from designing the limbic system on a cookie cake, drawing the central nervous system in parallel to a tree, an animated video, two PowerPoint presentations with videos, and displays of the brain made out of food and clay.

Overall it was great to see the creativity of these talented students and see them taking their understanding of what we were discussing in Psychology, and expanding upon it.