EDID 6505

SYSTEMS APPROACH TO DESIGNING INSTRUCTIONAL MATERIAL

Training Teachers to train
and integrate Music into
the Core Curriculum
Final Group Project
Reflective Piece
Tamara Millette
ID 806008118
8/22/2014


COURSE COORDINATOR: DR. CAMILLE DICKSON-DEANE
FACILITATOR: DR. LEROY HILL

1

Reflective Piece

Training Teachers to teach and integrate Music into the Core Curriculum

The Garrisons decided to collaborate to achieve the final project for EDID6505. The key was
that in creating a whole new instruction the team will be able to find a topic to which that all
can contribute. The collaboration also meant that the project will be easier to get done even
though there were so many more areas to development. Skype was used as the main form of
communication and google docs was used for the preparation of the documents used in the
project.
Members of the team each put forward suggestions and we agreed to the topic to Instruction
in digital archiving to be used in a library environment. As time passed, the progress of the
project was limited with most people being concerned with the technicality of the subject and
also whether we should be creating instruction on digital archiving general theory or on specific
software application. Each of these areas required in-depth research but time was limited. A
decision was then taken to change the topic to Music and Music Integration in primary level
schools.
Gathering Information for the Music and Music Integration was a lot easier and we had access
to experts in the field and feedback from teachers in Trinidad and Tobago who are currently
being trained to implement as similar programme. We work together via skype for the first few
days to develop the overall course goal, the needs assessment analysis, the objectives and task
selection work sheet . We then individually added to the contextual analysis in the google
document. There was some disagreement to how we should go about the actual music
2

instruction either with the actual teaching of music with notes or letting the focus be on beats
and sound for the instruction. The focus was eventually decided on as the latter.
The group then broke into teams to develop the instruction for selected task. Albert and I
agreed to pair and develop the instructional lesson for the singing task. Albert and I worked
well as a team and focused our efforts on creating the lesson to include the development of the
subtask objective, finding the best fit of instructional strategies to deliver the information,
creating the power point based around Merrills first principles and creating assessment tools
for the lesson. Group meetings were less regular. On many occasions during this exercise I
actually had to refer back to the individual topics on the course page to aide in my recall of the
topic. Albert and I worked well as a team for this effort. We communicated ideas and gave
feedback on a daily basis.
During this time we had to meet as a group almost hastily when we realized that we need to
prepare a group presentation. Bringing all the information we had together for the
presentation made us realize a number of things. 1. There seem to be some misinterpretation
as to the role that the integration played (should it also be added to each lesson or as a
separate topic) 2. We also lack uniformity in our presentation of our areas for the project. 3.
We had not properly consulted the group project course guide to see what was required of us.
4. In a number of areas we had strayed from the format that was used when we created our
mini project. I believe that these things were missed in our haste to complete the project.
We were able to adjust our project to be more in line with the assignment and each others
task areas. Working in the group and in particular with Albert allowed me to gain further
knowledge in instructional design e.g. the understanding of the rubric and its relation to
3

performance objectives and assessment in general. The team was able to support each other
and apply their strong areas to the project. I saw communication as the biggest issue for this
time because of the number of miscommunicated ideas that flowed within the group. This
could be attributed to the fact that the majority of member had dominant personality types
and always wanted to be the one to get their point across. Not enough time was spent listen.