Five percent of your grade comes from your completion of two Article Reports each marking period. While your psychology text is an excellent example of its genre, new research is constantly being conducted and reported in the media and journals. The goal of this assignment is for you to help keep the class up to date on new developments and research in psychology, and to stimulate your own interest in the field. The articles you choose do not need to be relevant to whatever we are learning at the time, but just be relevant to psychology in some way--and, hopefully, to you.
1. FIND and READ an article from a reputable news website, magazine, newspaper, journal, or appropriate web site that concerns psychology. The article must be of significant length and depth; if it were a typed page, it needs to be more than one page long. It is recommended that you show me the article before you start work on it—otherwise, it may not be accepted. Also, no two people may do the same article during the marking period—first come, first served! Recommended sources include:
The mental health sections and articles from online news sources such as
www.psypost.org/ features easy-to-understand explanations of studies in psychological journals
CNN.com Health They don't have a special mental health section, so pick carefully.
NPR Shots (Health News). Again, not all of these concern psychology.
www.psychologicalscience.org. "Observer Magazine"
https://scienceblog.com/ (not all related to Psychology)
www.sciencehistory.org (not all related to Psychology)
Proto Magazine from Massachusetts General Hospital
BBC Future section (this is the Neuroscience section; also check out Science and Health)
New York Times Health section (not all relating to psychology)
Science Daily Mind & Brain
Scientific American magazine
Newspapers, especially Tuesday’s Science Times section of the New York Times
General interest publications such as Time, women’s magazines, etc. Psychology Today is acceptable but not as good a magazine as the name would suggest!
DO NOT report on an entry in an online psychology encyclopedia, Wikipedia, site aggregator, advice column, or anything else that is not based on new, current research.
2. CREATE your writeup; use the form in the Google Classroom assignment. The document should include:
A link to the web page of the article. If the article is in print, just give a copy to the teacher
Summarize the content of your article.
Discuss how it relates to psychology. Use the index in your textbook to look up information about the topic if we have not covered it yet.
Discuss what you think of this particular innovation or aspect of psychology
3. PRESENT. You will be presenting your findings orally to the class and answering their questions. This must be done in a serious and thorough manner, and you should not just read what you have written.
The assignment must be turned in using the form attached to the assignment in Google Classroom. DO NOT share a document with me.
Article reports will be due on Fridays (usually) according to a schedule that Mr. Cunningham gives you, and like all other homework assignments, they will NOT be accepted late!