The Biological Basis of Behavior

The through-line

"Many students find the technical material in this chapter difficult to master… Learning this material will require a great deal of rehearsal." That's the correct diagnosis, and it should shape how the unit is taught. Biopsych is the first unit where students cannot reason their way to an answer they never encoded. There is a large, arbitrary vocabulary, and it has to go in.

How to use the lesson pages

• Same conventions as every unit in this course — one path per slot, 90-minute blocks, bold non-negotiables, alternates in the appendices. The full how-to is on the course page.
• It's a link audit — eight places where the source plans point at the wrong file, use one document for two different purposes, or reference a resource that was never linked. Two of them matter: the front-matter "Unit 2 Test" link goes to the vocabulary list, not the test, and the front-matter "Quiz: Brain Specificity" link goes to the warm-up sheet. Fix those before a colleague hits them.
• The source header says 10 days, but there are 11 lessons — Day 0 through Day 10 — and Days 4 and 5 are the same lesson plan pasted twice, identical down to the extension activity. I read that duplication as a signal rather than a mistake: this content genuinely does spill across two blocks. So instead of deleting one, I split the arc — Day 4 is brain imaging, Day 5 is the peripheral nervous system — which is how it was already being taught, just never written down that way.

What it is

Fifteen short homework readings replace the Chapter 3 reading for this unit. Each takes 6 to 8 minutes, has check-in questions as students read, and ends with an “Am I ready?” checklist. Students read one or two a night, always the ones due before the next class. The readings follow this unit's order (genetics and the cortex first, neurons later), not the book's.

The readings live on the Unit 2 readings hub, which also carries the student guide: nightly expectations, quiz rules, and grading, ready to hand out. Students open it with an access code.

Which readings, which night

Readings 1–2 are assigned on Day 0. After that, each lesson's Homework names the next set and links to it: 3–4 after Day 1, 5–6 after Day 2, 7–8 after Day 3, 9 after Day 4, 10–11 after Day 5.5 (due Day 6, with the remote neuron day in between), 12–13 after Day 6, and 14–15 after Day 7.

Running a class

• Questions window, 5 minutes, every class. Students ask about last night's reading, and you answer fully.
• Then a pop quiz, or not. Whether a quiz happens never depends on whether anyone asked a question, so asking can't become a way to stall it. Choose the quiz days yourself and don't announce them.
• The quiz: three questions, about 6 minutes, handwritten, each read aloud twice or shown on a slide. One recall, one explain, one apply to a new scenario.
• Format: lined paper; name, date, and “Pop Quiz: Reading #” top right; numbered answers with a line skipped; complete sentences; pen or dark pencil.
• Scoring: 2 points per question plus 1 for format, 7 in all, recorded as a minor grade.

The question bank is teacher-only and isn't posted here, because students can reach this page.

Earned notes, and an engagement option

Students may use their own handwritten notes on a pop quiz if they've shown engagement and investment in class. Typed or printed notes never count. By default that call is your judgment, and the student guide says only that the teacher decides.

Option: an operational definition of engagement. Define engagement as behaviors you can observe and count: for example, asked or answered a question in the 5-minute window, brought a question from the “Am I ready?” checklist, or finished the day's in-class activity.

The cost is bookkeeping every class, which is why it's optional. The payoff is a live research-methods lesson. Have the class write the definition, the same move as operationalizing a variable in Unit 1. Then ask whether it's reliable (would two observers agree?) and valid (does it measure investment, or only talking?).