Psychology Transition Materials

As with their sociological peers, Psychology teachers have also been busy producing a wide range of materials designed, in the main, to ease the transition between GCSE and A-level and this means there’s plenty of resources freely available to either use “as is” or, more-likely perhaps, to inspire the creation of your own transition resources.

I’ve tried to provide a fair spread of different types of transition resource, but while some teachers provide materials that take a slightly off-beat and novel approach, most of the stuff is fairly standard, straightforward “research and make notes” material. This doesn’t, of course, somehow make it bad or less useful but I do like to see a bit of innovation…

Summer Work 2021: This features a simple “complete the table” activity of psychological perspectives combined with 4 exam-style questions that test mathematical understanding.

Chelmer Valley Transition Tasks: These consist of three types: a Creative Task based on a mini experiments; a Writing Task that involves producing a handout on Milgram’s Obedience Experiment and a Reading Task that involves producing a Mind Map from a specified article.

A Level Summer Work 2021: YouTube podcast designed to introduce students to the “Fundamentals of Psychology” while also trying to assess independent study and written communication skills through a range of tasks (from written work to watching YT videos). The podcast makes reference to “study sheets” that aren’t available to the casual viewer but if you find this approach interesting you’ll probably find a way around this problem.

Psychology Induction Summer Work: Designed to introduce the skills and some of the content required for A-level, this pack offers a wide range of activities designed to “Introduce Psychology”. There’s also a recommended reading and viewing list for good measure.

Year 12 Transition 2017: 3 tasks built around researching some key studies and writing about them in a structured way.

Summer Work: A couple of activities, one that involves creating posters to illustrate 5 different psychological approaches while the other involves researching a study in some detail.

Sandringham Summer Work: This material’s a little different in that it involves lots of suggested reading, watching and listening from which students are encouraged to “keep a journal of what you do. You can use words, images, notes, mind maps and summaries to record your explorations”.

Summer Task: Going form the sublime to the pretty bog-standard, this work involves students doing some basic research on 4 different psychological approaches.

Summer Transition Work: A couple of related tasks that develop the basic “research it, write about it” format and give it a novel, interesting twist. Firstly, students “Research the five main approaches in Psychology” and then they try to apply them to selected real-world events (such as explaining “Football fan aggression from a biological perspective”).

Transition Workbook: Running to 21 pages, this demands a serious amount of work, even to the extent students have to enrol in the Open University’s Open Learn project in order to answer many of the questions posed. And there are a lot of them. Plus the additional questions. And books to read. Not forgetting films and videos to watch. Serious students only need apply…

Psychology Summer Bridging Work: And then we turn to this minimalist material: complete a short worksheet on ethics, define some psychological approaches and apply them to explain an issue “in the news”. Relax for rest of summer.

Summer Work Booklet: 8 tasks, covering areas like What is Psychology?, Psychological research, Key approaches  and the like, that mainly involve researching a topic and then answering short questions about it. There are, however, some interesting variations, such as learning how to use Cornell Notes. Listening to TED talks and, a little bizarrely, “Making something related to Psychology” (not as strange as it sounds). This is rounded-off with lists if recommended reading and viewing.

Summer Work 2018: One of the few Eduqas examples I was able to find, this involves researching and writing briefly about an ethical issue in psychology.