Instrument Families- Web Diagram Activity

Diagram-Instrument Families I recently created a poster board with the Inspiration program. I entitled the learning board "Instrument Families" as my main objective to cover. This particular standard is covered in the first grade edition of the Tennessee General Music Standards. Each of the four families entitled "Brass", "Woodwinds", "Percussion" and "Strings" have four instrument examples included as examples of each family. The "Percussion" family includes instruments such as the bass drum, cymbals, gong, and snare drum. Members of the "Strings" family include the cello, violin, viola, and bass. Some members of the brass instrument family include the tuba, trumpet, trombone, and the french horn. Finally, members of the woodwinds family are the clarinet, oboe, bassoon, and the flute. I also included pictures of each of these instruments for easy identification on a poster board or as a handout. What went well: It was fairly easy to come up with a topic because I have an extensive background in intrumental studies and I thought this would be the simplest way to make a story board that was not cluttered and easy to read. I had a seamless transfer of the pictures I had gathered to the Inspiration software by using the insert graphic tool.It was really easy to attach notes about each of the instrument families to the sub-categories Woodwinds, Brass, Percussion, and Strings. It was also really easy to make the main category "Instrument Families" into a hyperlink I found at a website that is extra student friendly for first graders to learn more about the different instruments and their families. What did not go well: It was a bit confusing to figure out what each of the tool's function was at the bottom of the Inspiration software. I had a little trouble making a text box and putting my State Standards and NET-T standards inside the box. I origianally had to draw a text box, but it wouldn't let me put a border around it until I clicked the rectangle on the tool bar and created another box to put my information in. I also had to make my project a little smaller in size so that it would fit on a poster board which was a little tricky. Dr. O'Bannon helped me with the formatting of the differentiation in shapes of my sub-headings as well. What could have gone better: I believe that if I had origianlly set my font size, color and shape of my different headings and size of my over all project by using the ruler I would not have had to go back in the program and change all of these minor details. Overall, I was very pleased with this software and I know it will come in handy for me in the General Music classroom. I am happy that I was introduced to this creative program.