Psychology 101

Don’t Leave Home Without It:

1. Study Skills (your learning style and how to own your time management and study habits)
2. Financial Basics (how saving and spending can affect opportunities)
3. Critical Thinking (Logic — what factors affect our decision-making-process)

When asked what courses I recommend students take to be prepared to CLEP, I like to re-phrase the question to: What courses do I recommend ALL students take before they leave home?  We want our students prepared for success regardless if they are earning college credits in high school.  I would start sprinkling in these ideas before middle school, and in 7th grade and up, include a semester course on each.  However, if they possess strong study skills, understand the true costs of college and understand the motives and effects of their decision-making, not only will they be more goal-driven in college, but they will better understand the opportunities that open up if they work hard and include CLEP/DSST exams in their middle and high school years.

So you’ve got these covered (or plan to).  Then what?  Naturally, we teach our kids in History, Algebra and English.  But many of us don’t think about including Psychology in our student’s line up.  Besides being a fun and engaging course, students learn about people, theories, experiments and ideas that have become common-place in our culture.  When I taught this course in a homeschool co-op two years ago, I scoured the review boards for a text that was engaging, appropriate for grades 7-12, visual, yet straight-forward and conservative.  My choice was Understanding Psychology by Kasschau (purchased for one cent and there is a free companion website).  Followed up with InstantCert cards, the majority in the class  (twenty 7-12th graders) took and passed the Psychology CLEP exam.

• One of the reasons I chose to teach this subject (my own kids were in the class) was because of the secularism and twists to the subject matter that one often finds in a college intro-psych course. Yes, you can e-mail your local college and ask for a syllabus!

• A second reason was that Psychology is a common course option for all liberal arts degrees so CLEP now or take at college later.  For those working on meeting the MN Transfer Curriculum Goal areas, Psychology often fulfills two goal areas.

An added bonus to having your students study Psychology in high school is the enormous opportunity to easily build on the first three credits earned.  Psychology is a foundational course that several other CLEP Exams build on, or overlap.  After taking the Psychology CLEP, you will find it is easy to add 2-8 weeks of additional study and also earn credits for the Human Growth and Development CLEP, Educational Psychology CLEP and even the Sociology CLEP.  My 10th grader completed all of these in one year (12 credits) and my 8th grader took and passed three of these courses (9 credits).

If your student is a visual learner, there is a great new FREE resource from education-portal.com  Match these videos to the Table of Contents in the REA Psychology CLEP book and you will have a solid Psychology course (and 3-12 credits)!

If YOU have a favorite Psychology CLEP option, feel free to leave a comment!