VOICES ACROSS TIME FINAL GROUP PROJECT GUIDELINES:

  1. Learning Styles – As you craft these lessons, pay particular attention to addressing learning style differences within the teaching tools
  • Auditory
  • Visual
  • Tactile/kinesthetic

Try to always move the learning activities from a lower to a higher level thinking application. (Bloom’s Taxonomy:

  • Knowledge
  • Comprehension
  • Application
  • Analysis
  • Synthesis
  • Evaluation

Also consider integrating Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences into your teaching tools/learning strategies. (

  • Linguistic (word smart)
  • Logical-mathematical (number/reasoning sense)
  • Spatial (picture smart)
  • Bodily-kinesthetic (body smart)
  • Musical (same)
  • Interpersonal (people smart)
  • Intrapersonal (self smart)
  • Naturalistic (nature smart)

Most likely your strategies already include these various theorists’ perspectives. You do not need to identify these elements in the lesson, but craft learning strategies/teaching tools that include them to some extent.

  1. Actual Presentation: Please honor the following basic guidelines:
  1. Your maximum time is 45 minutes. Each member of the group needs to have an equal part in the presentation.
  2. Your presentations may take one of two directions: explaining the structure and outcome of the activity OR a practical demonstration of a lesson within the activity. (For our general purposes, I think the former rather than the latter will serve us to a far richer extent and advise you to consider that direction.)
  3. Do not play the music nor review the lyrics within your presentation. (Our time restrictions do not accommodate the full length versions)
  4. It is not necessary to provide each participant with a full copy of the activity as we’ll be receiving them on the CD. However you might want an outline that you can use to focus your presentation It could be placed on the overhead.
  1. Content and Formatting the Activity Write Up:
  1. Content specifics: Remember that the song is the core of the lesson and craft your activity accordingly. We ask that if you are referencing a specific historic period, the song(s) selected for the lesson will be from that period. Also, that learning activities clearly demonstrating integration of various learning styles, thinking levels, intelligences will also be expected.
  1. Length of activity and its write up: For your individual purposes you might be designing lessons that will run for a long time (5 – 8 class periods). For the purposes of this assignment and the institute, we would like you to contain the activities you present/write up to one to four class periods.
  1. Formatting: Most of you may already have formats that are standard in your departments, schools or districts. As a group you will need to reconcile these differences so that the CD has one format per activity. For the sake of overall conformity, I suggest a simple standard format as a template for all of you. These are the topical areas
  • Title
  • Date
  • Authors’ names/schools (with your contact information)
  • Context: curricular area, grade level/track level for secondary, note if this is specifically cross-curricular in nature
  • Suggested time frame for execution
  • Overall goal
  • Learning Objectives: Some specific learning objectives
  • Tools/supplies
  • Learning Strategies: Step by step description of the actual activity/activities with learning/teaching tools (strategies)
  • Assessment tools: Suggestions for assessment tools (you may list some suggestions or design a few)
  • Bibliography of resources used in/needed for this activity
  • NOTE – this entire write up should be no more than 500 words in length or two pages