2nd Day of Class

2nd Day of Class:

What I Planned:

I asked the students to complete the following assignment at home:

Top 10 Reasons to Major in Psychology – Critical Thinking Questions

Read the article at: http://bit.ly/10ReasonsForPsych and then answer the questions below.  Bring your answers to class on Wednesday.

1. What was one idea you had about psychology that you now know is inaccurate?
2. List 1-2 places/professions that a person with a psychology degree typically works.
3. List the 10 skills that psych majors gain during pursuit of their degree.
1. What job do you think you want to have?
2. Which of these skills will be useful in that job(s)?
3. Which of these skills will help you right now in your everyday life?
4. Why are you taking this class? What do you hope to gain from it?

And we will go into a discussion about it in class.  Discussion is my main weakness.  I don't know how to prompt them to think deeper and more meaningfully about things.  My plan is to have them work in groups first to discuss the answers, then we will talk about the skills/jobs they want to have and why they are taking the class.

Then, I am asking them to read an article found here: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2013/12/07/college-graduates-suffer-from-a-lack-of-soft-skill/

Then I will ask them to relate it to the 10 skills in the article they read at home.  Then in groups, I will ask them to Create a course assignment that develops one or more of these "soft skills".  

Lastly, I want the students to discuss the different perspectives on psychology.  Most of them do not have their textbooks yet, so I have to assume no prior knowledge.  I have a hand-out to give them (I found it here).  I'm going to have them review it in groups and then make a concept map with a behavior in the middle and the 7 perspectives around it.  For each perspective, I will ask them to generate the "focus" of the perspective, "questions asked" by that perspective, and "potential explanations" for the behavior in the middle.  I need to go make a list of behaviors for them to choose from (hahaha!).  This will be the hardest part for me.

Ok, after (not that) much deliberation, I'm using:

• anxiety
• empathy
• love
• selfishness
• cheating (either on a test or on a loved one, their choice)
• aggression
• laughing
• extroversion (being outgoing)

What actually happened:

I would say about 3/4 of each class actually showed up with the work completed.  To be honest, that's much higher than I would have expected.  And, a solid number of those without it were not in class on the first day or had just registered for the course.  During the discussion periods I gave them, I walked around and monitored conversation. Sometimes, I would join in, prompting them to think a bit more critically about their topics.  Then, we would come back together for about 10-15 minutes to have the groups share aloud to the class.  The timeline for the 2nd day of class looked something like this:

Group Discussion of HW answers: 10 minutes

Class discussion: 10 minutes

Group reading of the college graduate skills article + discussion: 15 minutes

Class discussion: 10 minutes

Creation of course assignment to develop soft skills: 20-25 minutes

Explanation of perspectives concept map: 5-10 minutes

It turned out we could not complete the concept map in class, so I assigned it for homework.  I left instructions and an example on their course website, so we will see who shows up with it on the 3rd day of class.