High-quality, engaging lessons designed specifically for the AQA A Level Psychology (new specification), focusing on the Clinical Psychology content. These lessons are ideal for teachers, tutors, or students seeking clear explanations, strong exam preparation, and structured skill development.
Topics covered include:
- Definitions in the Field of Mental Health
- Definitions of abnormality, including deviation from social norms, failure to function adequately, statistical infrequency and deviation from ideal mental health
- Strengths and limitations of each definition
- Phobias
- Characteristics of phobias
- Behavioural, emotional and cognitive characteristics
- The behavioural approach to explaining phobias
- Classical and operant conditioning
- The two-process model
- Treatments for phobias, including systematic desensitisation and flooding
- Evaluation of behavioural explanations and treatments
- Depression
- Characteristics of depression
- Behavioural, emotional and cognitive characteristics
- The cognitive approach to explaining depression
- Beck’s cognitive theory
- Ellis’s ABC model
- Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
- Evaluation of cognitive explanations and treatments
- Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
- Characteristics of OCD
- Behavioural, emotional and cognitive characteristics
- The biological approach to explaining OCD
- Genetic explanations
- Neurotransmitter explanations, including the role of serotonin
- Neural explanations and brain structures
- Drug therapy as a treatment for OCD
- Evaluation of biological explanations and treatments
Lesson features:
- Starter questions to activate prior knowledge
- Clear explanations with teacher modelling
- Deliberate practice and retrieval activities
- Scaffolded exam questions aligned to AQA assessment objectives
- Regular checks for understanding
- Application of theories and research to exam-style scenarios
- AO1 knowledge, AO2 application and AO3 evaluation practice
- Plenaries to consolidate learning and exam technique
These lessons are exam-focused, clearly structured, and accessible, supporting students in developing strong clinical psychology knowledge alongside the AO3 evaluation skills required for success in AQA A Level Psychology.
Also included is a workbook which coincides with the lessons.
