Whether you love teaching high school psychology or it got dropped in your lap, teaching it can feel a bit messy—because human behavior is a little messy. But one good thing about teaching this course is that students are interested in why people do what they do, from memory to stress, personality to mental health. It’s not hard to find a good hook.
A strong course turns their curiosity into evidence-based thinking. Instead of leaning too heavily on one-off activities, you can build lessons around research, ethics, discussion, and real-world texts students can—and actually want to—access.
[What should a high school psychology course include?](id-what)
Key Takeaways
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Plan around major psychology topics. A clear course map helps you cover behavior, cognition, development, social influence, mental health, and research without jumping between disconnected activities.
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Teach psychology as a science. Students get more from high school psychology when they practice asking questions, reading evidence, interpreting data, and spotting weak claims.
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Return to research methods often. Repeating small research routines across units makes experiments, variables, ethics, and data feel useful instead of like one isolated chapter.
A strong high school psychology course gives students more than interesting facts and behavior. It helps them study mind, behavior, research, and ethics through topics they can connect to real life.
Core topics to include in a semester or year-long course
High school psychology courses work best when students can see how each topic builds on the last. You don’t have to cover every branch of psychology, but you can make sure to hit the highlights and connect those concepts to real life.
Use this sample course map as a starting point. You can compress it for a semester course or stretch each unit with more projects or readings to cover an entire year.
Semester at a glance
A practical 18-week high school psychology plan
Use this suggested sequence as a starting point. Adjust the weeks to fit your school calendar, course standards, and students’ needs.
Weeks
1–2
Course launch
Introduction to psychology
Introduce psychology as the scientific study of behavior and mental processes. Start with perspectives, research methods, and ethics.
Weeks
3–5
Foundational concepts
Brain, behavior, sensation, and perception
Explore the brain, nervous system, sensation, perception, sleep, and stress so students can connect biology to behavior.
Weeks
6–8
Learning and thinking
Learning, memory, and cognition
Teach conditioning, memory, thinking, intelligence, and cognitive processes using short evidence-based routines and classroom applications.
Weeks
9–10
Development
Development across the lifespan
Study physical, cognitive, and social development from infancy through adulthood, including identity, attachment, and life-span change.
Weeks
11–13
People and influence
Social psychology and personality
Examine personality, motivation, social influence, group behavior, bias, relationships, and how context shapes decision-making.
Weeks
14–16
Mental health
Mental health, disorders, and treatment
Cover mental health literacy, common disorders, treatment approaches, stigma, and help-seeking boundaries without turning the class into therapy.
Weeks
17–18
Course synthesis
Capstone psychology analysis
Ask students to apply psychological concepts, evidence, and ethical reasoning to a case study, research question, or real-world issue.
Do research methods belong in every unit?
Yes, research methods should show up throughout your entire course, not just in the first few weeks. If students only study variables, ethics, or data at the beginning, those skills will feel separate from the rest of what they learn.
A better approach is to make research methods a short routine in every unit. Students can practice with a study summary, graph, article, or classroom demonstration. The task doesn’t need to take the full class period either. Even 5–10 minutes of repeated practice helps reinforce evidence-based learning.
Classroom routine
The 10-minute research check
Use this quick routine with any psychology topic to help students connect concepts to evidence, data, ethics, and real-world claims.
Notice
Name the claim
Ask students to identify the psychology claim, research question, or behavior being studied.
Name
Identify the method
Have students decide whether the evidence comes from an experiment, survey, case study, observation, or correlational study.
Check
Look at the evidence
Ask students to identify variables, interpret a graph or percentage, or explain what the data shows.
Explain
State the limits
Students explain what the study can and cannot prove, then name one ethical concern or possible source of bias.
Try it across units
Use the routine during memory, social psychology, sleep, stress, personality, or mental health lessons. The goal is to help students ask, “What evidence supports this claim, and what are the limits of that evidence?”
[How do I start a high school psychology course?](id-how)
Key Takeaways
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Lead with student curiosity. Questions about sleep, memory, stress, attention, and social pressure help students see why psychology matters.
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Separate psychology from pop psychology. Early sorting activities help students tell the difference between evidence-based psychology, opinion, therapy, and everyday advice.
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Make research feel useful right away. Quick routines with claims, scenarios, and methods show students that psychology is built on evidence.
Start the course by showing students that psychology is more than personality quizzes or “fun facts” about the brain. The first week should help them see psychology as a science that asks evidence-based questions about behavior, thinking, and emotions.
Start with questions students already care about
To make psychology feel relevant, start with questions students already have before they enter your classroom. Try opening with questions like:
- Why do people remember some things and forget others?
- Why does sleep affect our mood?
- Why do some people conform even when they disagree?
- How do stress and motivation affect performance?
- Why do people sometimes misread situations?
You can use these questions and students’ answers to shift from opinion to evidence. Explore how psychologists study each topic, what type of evidence would help answer the question, and what the limitations of the evidence would be.
Use first-week activities that show psychology is evidence-based
First-week high school psychology activities should be engaging and make the course's purpose clear. By the end of the first week, students should understand that psychology is a science that uses evidence to study behavior and mental processes.
Use one or two of these activities to help students shift into that mindset right away.
Myth or evidence?
Give students familiar claims, such as “people are left-brained or right-brained” or “eyewitness memory works like a video recording.” Ask them to decide whether each claim sounds research-based, exaggerated, or unsupported.
Teacher move: Have students explain what evidence would make each claim stronger.
Psychology in the room
Ask students to notice behaviors already happening in class, such as attention, memory, motivation, emotion, social roles, or decision-making.
Teacher move: Connect student observations to future course topics so the class sees psychology as part of everyday life.
Perspective stations
Give groups the same behavior and ask them to explain it from different perspectives, such as biological, cognitive, behavioral, social-cultural, or psychodynamic.
Teacher move: Emphasize that psychologists can study the same behavior through more than one lens.
Research-method match
Give students a set of psychology questions and ask them to match each one to a possible method, such as an experiment, survey, case study, observation, or correlational study.
Teacher move: Ask students what each method could show and what it could not prove.
Ethics card sort
Give students short classroom research scenarios and ask them to sort each one into “safe,” “needs revision,” or “not appropriate.”
Teacher move: Use the discussion to introduce consent, privacy, emotional safety, and why ethics matter in psychology.
Introduce research methods through quick classroom routines
You don’t have to teach research methods as a separate unit to “set up” the rest of the course. Students can start practicing the habits of psychological research in small, repeatable ways during the first week. Then they can return to those routines again and again throughout the year.
First-week research methods look-fors
Use this checklist to see whether students are starting to think like psychology researchers.
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Ask a studyable question.
Students can turn a broad curiosity about behavior into a question that could be investigated with evidence.
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Choose a reasonable method.
Students can explain whether a question might fit an experiment, survey, observation, case study, or correlational study.
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Name what they would measure.
Students can identify the behavior, response, pattern, or data point that would help answer the question.
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Explain one limit.
Students can say what the evidence might show, what it cannot prove, or what ethical concern would need attention.
[What are safe, ethical activities for high school psychology?](id-activities)
Key Takeaways
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Keep activities low-risk. Choose demonstrations that let students analyze behavior without pressure, embarrassment, personal disclosure, or health risks.
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Set boundaries before sensitive units. Mental health lessons should build literacy and reduce stigma, not invite students to diagnose themselves, classmates, or fictional characters as fact.
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Use research projects with guardrails. Student-led work should focus on anonymous, non-sensitive questions or research proposals instead of experiments that create privacy or safety concerns.
Psychology topics can dig deep and explore some uncomfortable topics, but you don’t have to avoid them in the classroom. Instead, you can focus on doing work that asks students to observe, analyze, compare, or interpret research rather than digging into the behaviors of real people.
Safe classroom demonstrations to use in high school psychology
Choose activities that are simple, observable, and low-risk. Let students analyze behavior without putting classmates on the spot or asking anyone to share private information.
Use demonstrations with voluntary participation, neutral tasks, and clear learning goals. Then connect the activity back to research methods to explore what students observed, what the activity showed, and what it couldn’t prove.
Attention and perception demos
- Stroop effect: Have students compare how long it takes to read color words when the ink color matches or conflicts with the word.
- Selective attention: Use a neutral observation task where students track one detail and then discuss what they missed.
- Visual illusions: Ask students to explain how perception can differ from the physical stimulus.
Connect it to research: Ask students what the activity suggests about attention, perception, and the limits of a quick classroom demonstration.
Memory demos
- Serial-position effect: Read a neutral word list and ask students which words they remember best.
- False memory: Use neutral word lists to show how memory can be reconstructed, not replayed like a recording.
- Study strategy comparison: Compare recall after two low-stakes review methods, such as rereading and retrieval practice.
Connect it to research: Ask students to identify what was measured and what variables could affect the results.
Learning and conditioning demos
- Classical conditioning simulation: Use a fictional or teacher-led scenario to label stimulus, response, acquisition, and extinction.
- Operant conditioning analysis: Give students fictional school, sports, or pet-training scenarios and ask them to identify reinforcement and punishment.
- Habit loop analysis: Have students analyze a fictional habit using cue, behavior, and consequence.
Connect it to research: Keep the analysis focused on examples, not changing classmates’ behavior.
Research methods demos
- Survey wording effects: Show how two neutral versions of the same question can shape responses.
- Reaction-time tests: Use a simple, voluntary task to discuss measurement, practice effects, and variation.
- Observation practice: Ask students to code non-sensitive classroom or media examples using a shared, neutral category list.
Connect it to research: Ask students to explain the method, possible bias, and what the data can or cannot prove.
High school psychology activities to avoid
Some psychology activities may sound engaging at first, but they can cross the line from interesting to uncomfortable if they’re not handled correctly. Activities that involve peer pressure, require students to share private information, or recreate ethically questionable research should stay out of the classroom.
If your activity hits a red flag, simply shift toward a safer task. You can analyze fictional scenarios, critique a study summary, or explore how an experiment redesign could have been more ethical.
Activity safety red flags
If any of these are true, revise the activity or choose a safer way for students to analyze the concept.
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It uses deception or embarrassment.
Avoid activities that trick students, single them out, shame them, or make them the “experiment” without clear consent.
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It asks students to disclose personal information.
Do not require students to share mental health concerns, family history, trauma, diagnosis, identity, or other sensitive experiences.
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It changes students’ bodies, emotions, or routines.
Skip activities involving sleep deprivation, food or caffeine manipulation, anxiety induction, stress challenges, or health-related experiments.
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It creates privacy or consent concerns.
Avoid secret recording, public norm violations, experiments on younger students, or research on people who have not knowingly agreed to participate.
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It invites diagnosing classmates.
Students should not diagnose themselves, classmates, family members, celebrities, or fictional characters as fact.
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It recreates an unethical classic study.
Teach studies like Milgram, Asch, or Zimbardo through analysis, critique, and ethical redesign instead of classroom replication.
How to handle mental health topics responsibly
Mental health topics are important in high school psychology, but because you don’t know all of what your students have gone through, or are going through while they’re in your class, you should have clear boundaries for discussion.
The goals should be to build mental health literacy and understand psychological concepts.
Teach disorders without encouraging self-diagnosis
Set the expectation early: Students can study symptoms, criteria, research, treatment, stigma, and misconceptions, but they should not diagnose themselves, classmates, family members, celebrities, or fictional characters as fact.
Teacher language to use:
“This class helps us understand psychology as an academic science. It does not replace support from a counselor, trusted adult, or healthcare professional.”
Keep mental health lessons academic, not therapeutic
Frame the unit around literacy. Students can ask what common misconceptions exist, how psychologists classify symptoms, what treatment categories exist, and how stigma affects people. Avoid activities that require students to share diagnoses, trauma, family history, or private experiences.
Better classroom task:
Have students create a myth-vs.-fact resource, help-seeking guide, or stigma-reduction message using accurate psychological terminology.
Set discussion boundaries before the unit starts
Before sensitive conversations, make the norms explicit. Personal sharing should be optional, students should not evaluate peers, and the class should use careful language when discussing mental health.
Classroom norm:
“We can discuss examples, research, and accurate descriptions. We do not label people, make jokes about diagnoses, or ask classmates to explain personal experiences.”
Read more
Want more support setting discussion norms? Explore classroom discussion strategies that help students share, listen, and respond respectfully during sensitive topics.
Read the classroom discussions blog
Should students run their own psychology experiments?
Yes, you should encourage students to do their own psychology research, but with limits. Student-led research needs more structure than research projects in some other subject. The safest projects ask students to analyze behavior, evaluate evidence, or design research without collecting personal information or manipulating others.
Student projects should stay voluntary, anonymous when possible, and low-risk.
Better project options
- Anonymous, non-sensitive surveys about study habits, media use, school routines, or neutral preferences.
- Voluntary memory demonstrations using neutral word lists or recall tasks.
- Perception activities using public-domain images, illusions, or neutral stimuli.
- Content analysis of ads, headlines, public media, or fictional scenes.
- Naturalistic observation of non-identifiable patterns, such as seating choices or hallway traffic flow.
- Existing dataset analysis where students interpret data without collecting personal information.
- Research proposals where students design an ethical study but do not conduct it.
Use proposal or analysis only
- Clinical symptoms or diagnosis because students should not collect or interpret private health information.
- Trauma, grief, or family conflict because these topics can create disclosure and safety concerns.
- Substance use, illegal behavior, or sexuality because these are sensitive personal topics.
- Body image or eating behaviors because these questions can be harmful or triggering.
- Stress, anxiety, or mood manipulation because students should not create emotional risk for participants.
- Secret observation or recording because participants need privacy and consent.
- Experiments on younger students or strangers because consent and supervision are harder to manage.
Teacher rule of thumb: If the project would make a participant feel exposed, pressured, embarrassed, diagnosed, or unsafe, redesign it as a proposal, case study, or evidence analysis.
[How do you make high school psychology both rigorous and engaging?](id-rigor)
Key Takeaways
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Start with real-life questions. Student interest in memory, stress, personality, social pressure, and the brain can become a path into evidence-based thinking.
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Make abstract concepts visible. Models, case studies, scenarios, and short demonstrations help students understand complex topics without turning the unit into memorization.
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Assess application, not just vocabulary. Strong psychology tasks ask students to explain behavior, use evidence, identify limits, and apply concepts to new situations.
High school psychology can be both fun and academically rigorous. The key is to keep lessons anchored in real questions, clear concepts, and evidence.
Make biology and neuroscience easier to teach
Biology and neuroscience can get technical, especially when students have to memorize brain parts and diagrams. Keep the focus on cause and effect. How does a system work and how does that system connect to behavior, memory, emotion, or attention?
Neuron communication
Definition: The way nerve cells send, receive, and stop messages in the nervous system.
Why it matters: Students can use the phrase “message sent, message received, message stopped” to explain how signals connect the brain and body.
Neurotransmitters
Definition: Chemical messengers that help signals move between neurons.
Why it matters: Tie neurotransmitters to a process or behavior, such as mood, sleep, attention, stress, or reward, instead of treating them as isolated terms.
Brain regions
Definition: Areas of the brain that support different functions, such as movement, memory, language, decision-making, emotion, or perception.
Why it matters: Remind students that one brain area does not fully “control” one behavior. Brain systems usually work together.
Endocrine system
Definition: A body system that sends chemical messages through hormones.
Why it matters: Students can compare the endocrine system’s slower chemical messages with the nervous system’s faster signals.
Biological rhythms
Definition: Natural body cycles that affect processes like sleep, alertness, mood, and attention.
Why it matters: This term helps students connect sleep to memory, learning, stress, and performance.
Sensation and perception
Definition: Sensation is detecting information through the senses. Perception is how the brain interprets that information.
Why it matters: Students can use this pair to explain illusions, attention, sound, context, and why people may interpret the same situation differently.
Sentence frame: The biological system or term is _____, and it helps explain behavior by _____.
Teach personality beyond psychological assessments
Personality is one of the easiest psychology topics to make engaging, but it’s not the only one to focus on. Students may enjoy quizzes and personality labels, but the learning goal should be measurable: How do psychologists decide whether a personality tool is reliable, valid, and useful?
Instead of asking students to “find their type,” ask them to evaluate how scientists measure personality. This keeps the lesson fun while pushing students to work toward stronger scientific thinking.
What students may think
What psychologists ask
Reliability
What students may think
“My result feels right today.”
What psychologists ask
Would the same person get a similar result later, or could mood, setting, or wording change the answer?
Validity
What students may think
“This sounds like me, so it must be accurate.”
What psychologists ask
Does the tool actually measure what it claims to measure, or does it rely on broad statements that could fit many people?
Categories
What students may think
“I fit this type.”
What psychologists ask
Are the categories too fixed or too broad? Would a trait-based approach show more variation?
Evidence
What students may think
“A lot of people share this quiz, so it must be useful.”
What psychologists ask
What data would show that this measure explains behavior, predicts patterns, or works across different groups?
Teacher move: Let students enjoy the topic, then keep returning to the science question: What makes one personality measure stronger than another?
Assess psychology beyond vocabulary tests
Vocabulary matters, but psychology assessments should ask students to do more than define terms. Strong tasks ask students to apply concepts, use evidence, interpret data, and explain the limits of a claim.
Psychology assessment look-fors
Use these criteria when students move from defining terms to applying psychology concepts in writing, discussion, projects, or performance tasks.
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Use the concept accurately.
Students name the psychology concept and explain it in a way that matches the lesson, scenario, or source.
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Apply the idea to evidence.
Students connect the concept to a study summary, graph, data point, quote, example, or classroom scenario.
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Explain the reasoning.
Students show how the evidence supports their answer instead of just matching a term to an example.
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Address ethics or limits.
Students explain what the evidence can and cannot prove, or identify one ethical concern, bias, or alternative explanation.
[What makes an AP Psychology course different from a traditional one?](id-ap)
Key Takeaways
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AP Psychology moves faster. Teachers need a tighter pacing plan because the course framework covers five major units and prepares students for a standardized exam.
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Research skills matter all year. Students need repeated practice with methods, variables, data, ethics, generalizability, and evidence-based reasoning.
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Free-response practice should be routine. Students need regular practice reading study summaries, building claims, using evidence, and explaining their reasoning.
AP Psychology covers many of the same topics as a traditional course, but the pacing, skill expectations, and assessments differ. College Board’s current AP Psychology framework contains five units and emphasizes areas like:
- Concept application.
- Research methods and design.
- Data interpretation.
- Argumentation.
The exam also asks students to do more than recall terms. The current free-response section includes an Article Analysis Question based on one summarized peer-reviewed source and an Evidence-Based Question based on three summarized peer-reviewed sources.
How to build AP Psychology free-response practice
AP Psychology free-response practice works best when you turn it into a weekly routine. Students need time to get comfortable reading study summaries, naming research methods, interpreting statistics, and using evidence to support a claim.
Read the study summary
Students identify the research question, method, participants, and main psychology concept.
Name variables and measures
Students identify variables, operational definitions, and what the researchers measured.
Interpret data and ethics
Students explain one statistic, graph, or finding, then identify an ethical guideline or limitation.
Write a claim with evidence
Students write a short claim-evidence-reasoning response using one or more summarized sources.
Revise with scoring criteria
Students compare their response to scoring expectations and revise for accuracy, evidence, and reasoning.
Teacher move: Keep the routine short. A 10-minute skill practice repeated weekly can do more than a full practice FRQ students only see once or twice before the exam.
[How can Newsela support high school psychology instruction?](id-newsela)
Key Takeaways
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Use units to plan instruction. Newsela’s High School Psychology course is organized by major psychology topics, making it easier to align readings and activities to your pacing plan.
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Pair concepts with real-world texts. Articles, videos, and infographics can help students connect psychology ideas to research, current events, health, identity, behavior, and society.
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Choose resources by unit need. The unit breakdowns below can help you find resources for introductions, research methods, neuroscience, perception, learning, cognition, motivation, development, and mental health.
The Newsela Social Studies High School Psychology course provides a unit-based path to help students explore the scientific study of the mind and behavior. The course covers topics such as psychological theories, research methods, and brain function, with an emphasis on critical thinking and real-world applications.
Unit 1: Introduction to Psychology
Use this opening unit to help students understand what psychology is, where it came from, and how psychologists study behavior and mental processes.
These resources can help students see psychology beyond the theories and give you easy ways to discuss how people understand behavior.
Scroll left to right to see the full table.
Unit 2: Research Methods in Psychology
Use this unit to show students that psychology is a true science. Focus on the scientific methods, variables, ethics, and classic psychological studies.
Use these resources to give students multiple ways to practice the same three-step research habit:
- Ask what claim is being made.
- Explore what evidence supports it.
- Decide what limits or ethical questions still matter.
Scroll left to right to see the full table.
Unit 3: Biological Bases of Behavior
Use this unit to make neuroscience more concrete and easy to understand. Cover topics like brain structure and function, genetics, and how the brain affects behavior, emotion, and cognition.
These resources can help students move from memorizing biology terms to explaining relationships among brain and body systems.
Scroll left to right to see the full table.
Unit 4: Sensation and Perception
Use this unit to demonstrate the difference between detecting information and interpreting it. Cover topics like perception, the five senses, and attention.
These resources help students connect sensory systems to real-life examples of how and why we use them.
Scroll left to right to see the full table.
Unit 5: Learning and Conditioning
Use this unit to help students connect learning theory to everyday behavior. Cover topics like classical and operant conditioning, reinforcement and punishment, and real-life applications of learning principles in education.
These resources help students move from definitions to examples to understand what these situations look like in real life.
Scroll left to right to see the full table.
Unit 6: Memory and Cognition
Use this unit to help students connect areas like memory, thinking, and language to everyday learning. Cover topics like problem-solving, decision-making, creativity, and intelligence.
These resources help students see memory and cognition as active processes and how those processes can affect their everyday lives, from getting a good night’s sleep to multitasking.
Scroll left to right to see the full table.
Unit 7: Motivation and Emotion
Use this unit to help students connect their internal worlds to everyday behavior. Cover topics like motivation theories, stress and coping, resilience, and emotional regulation.
These resources help students connect emotion and motivation to real-world questions such as “What drives people?” “How do emotions shape decisions?” or “How does stress affect the body?”
Scroll left to right to see the full table.
Unit 8: Developmental Psychology
Use this unit to help students understand how people grow and change over their lives. Cover topics like life stages, cognitive and social development, and nature vs. nurture.
These resources help students connect developmental psychology to things they’ve experienced—and are still experiencing—as they grow up.
Scroll left to right to see the full table.
Unit 9: Mental Health and Disorders
Use this unit to build mental health literacy. Cover topics like anxiety, mood, personality, and mental health awareness.
These resources can help students discuss mental health using evidence, terminology, and treatment, rather than personal diagnosis. Keep the unit focused on literacy and awareness rather than asking students to disclose personal experiences.
Scroll left to right to see the full table.
Bring high school psychology concepts to life with Newsela
With the right structure and resources, you can help students explore psychology topics through an evidence-based lens. Newsela Social Studies helps make that goal easier with resources you can pair with core concepts, discussion routines, and safe classroom activities.
Not a Newsela customer yet? Sign up for an account to start your free 45-day trial of our premium products and get access to 18,000+ pieces of content, resources, and supports to bring your high school psychology classes to life.
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