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Home > Easy-to-Grade Writing Assignments for AP Psychology
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Easy-to-Grade Writing Assignments for AP Psychology
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by Jeanne A. Blakeslee
St. Paul's School for Girls
Brooklandville, Maryland
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All teachers, if they can, use students' writing to assess their understanding of material. Often, teachers teach too many students to assign essays or papers, which can be time consuming to grade. Nonetheless, students must be able to write to convey what they know. Teachers are always looking for methods of assessment that require use of words to gauge students' understanding of material. What follows are a few assessment techniques that use words in ways that are not as time consuming to assess as a formal essay or paper might be. These include definitions, sentences, distinctions, short-answer questions, summaries, and letters.
Understanding Concepts
Students must master definitions. In AP Psychology, students need to understand many concepts and apply them to real-life situations. In order to apply a concept, a student must know its necessary and sufficient components. A student of psychology must be able to use, explain, and apply several hundred concepts, ranging from incentive to action potential and deindividuation to ego ideal. It is not necessary for students to memorize the textbook definition of any concept; they simply need to know what parts of the definition are needed to make it complete and what might be superfluous so their definition remains tight. It is wise for teachers to test students' understanding of concepts for each unit, asking them to define five to ten definitions per unit. Two, three, or four points can be awarded for each definition, depending on the necessary and sufficient components contained in each. Definitions can be read fairly quickly and are relatively easy to grade, since the scorer needs only to look for key words that address what is necessary and sufficient.
A more interesting test question is to ask students to write a sentence demonstrating the relationship between two words. No definitions are necessary, only an understanding of each term and a sentence that reflects their relationship. If students can write a sentence showing how population and sample are related, they understand a good deal. When students demonstrate that social loafing is related to diffusion of responsibility or that reinforcement and extinction are connected, they have mastered those concepts. Sentences demonstrating the relationship between two words are easy to grade; I give three points for each sentence, one for the correct use of each term and the third for a correct relationship between the two words.
Another way to test understanding is to ask student to make distinctions between major concepts: Distinguish between random sample and random assignment. Make a distinction between self-serving bias and self-fulfilling prophecy. Distinguish between tolerance and withdrawal. These distinctions can assist a student's understanding, especially if the concepts can be easily confused. I give five points for a good distinction, since I require that each concept be not only defined but also explained. Two points are awarded for each concept and its explanation and one point is given for the feature that distinguishes them.
My favorite short-answer questions are free-response questions. I often use the free-response questions from old AP Exams; I also create new questions using the same format. Responses to these questions do not have to be lengthy and in fact should be terse and direct. Try a question like the following:
Racism is an intractable problem in our country today. Define each of the following concepts and explain how it contributes to the phenomenon of racism.
- Dispositional attribution
- Fundamental attribution error
- Learned helplessness
- Self-fulfilling prophecy
- Cognitive dissonance
If students can appropriately apply their knowledge of psychology to a social problem like racism, they have mastered the concepts -- and understand aspects of psychology that psychologists would like to give away.
Longer Assignments
There are many landmark experiments in psychology, many of them accessible to high school students. I have students read and summarize important articles from Scientific American or The American Psychologist. My rubric for summaries ensures that the students include all main ideas but only main ideas. I also teach students how to use APA style when they summarize significant articles. Festinger's Cognitive Dissonance (1962) or Gibson and Walk's article on the visual cliff (1960) are the kind of reports that help students to master sophisticated concepts and to appreciate the creativity needed to design good research. A better understanding of operational definitions and statistical analysis can be included if a teacher has time to assign and grade summaries.
My favorite writing assignment is letter writing. I have students write letters to someone they know and like, explaining a concept they have mastered in the unit or during the quarter. When I give this assignment, I use it for the entire length of the course. Students choose one person to whom to send all letters. Each letter is submitted unsealed in an addressed, stamped envelope. All letters are mailed after they are graded. The object of the letter is to define and describe a concept in the unit and to explain its relevance to the student's life. Most students also address the power they gain when they understand a psychological concept. Students love this exercise; they write to someone for an entire semester or year, and often the recipients of the letters write letters in return. Five, six, or seven letters to one person is not an insignificant communication; many students tell me that this assignment is important not only for their understanding of psychology but also for strengthening their relationships. I read and grade the letters for clarity, accuracy, and depth of understanding.
Students have a deeper understanding of what they learn when they write about what they know. Good teachers are constantly on the lookout for new ideas to assign and assess writing. Given the heavy teaching loads that many teachers have, major essays and term papers are usually out of the question. Nonetheless, teachers can test students by having them create accurate definitions of concepts or by having students construct sentences that demonstrate a relationship between words. Students also gain understanding by making distinctions between similar concepts and by responding to short-answer questions. When students read and write summaries of landmark research, they gain a greater appreciation of research design and operational definitions. Writing letters is another way for students to understand sophisticated concepts and their relevance to their lives. Many of these writing assignments are not as difficult or time consuming to assess as they might appear. It is possible to have students write and still have a life!
References
Festinger, L. 1962. Cognitive dissonance. Scientific American (October): 93-102.
Gibson, E. J., and R. D. Walk. 1960. The "visual cliff." Scientific American (April): 64-71.
Jeanne Blakeslee is the dean of students and director of student services at St. Paul's School for Girls in Brooklandville, Maryland. She has taught psychology for 26 years and AP Psychology since 1992. Jeanne has served as an AP Exam Reader since 2000. She has been a member of Teachers of Psychology in Secondary Schools (TOPSS) since its inception in 1992 and received an Excellence in Teaching Award from TOPSS in 2002.
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