Folk tales and fairy tales are of interest to and part of the language arts curriculum for young learners. This lesson supports the study of this genre and the study of irregular patterns and letter-sound relationships related to decoding and spelling. After reading the folk tale Jack and the Beanstalk, students discuss the word giant and its beginning sound. Students then create their own lists of words that begin with the same sound. Then, students are introduced to words with the soft g sound and create a new list of words with this beginning sound. As a culminating activity, students work individually or in groups to categorize animal names into groups according to their beginning g sound.

Instructional materials on local history topics developed by students at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga for use in secondary education classrooms.

This is part one of a two-day lesson plan which covers the impact of the major inventors and innovators of the Industrial Revolution. The purpose of this lesson is to build upon students’ prior knowledge of analyzing primary sources, the Industrial Revolution, and Chattanooga history. Using primary sources, students will identify major figures of the Industrial Revolution and describe their impact on Chattanooga and United States history.

Instructional materials on local history topics developed by students at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga for use in secondary education classrooms.

This is part two of a two-day lesson plan which covers the impact of the major inventors and innovators of the Industrial Revolution. The purpose of this lesson is to build upon students’ prior knowledge of analyzing primary sources, the Industrial Revolution, and Chattanooga history. Using primary sources, students will identify major figures of the Industrial Revolution and describe their impact on Chattanooga and United States history.

Instructional materials on local history topics developed by students at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga for use in secondary education classrooms.

The purpose of this lesson is to build upon students’ prior knowledge of analyzing primary sources, the Industrial Revolution, and Chattanooga history. Students will learn to identify major industrial centers in America and use primary sources to determine causes of rural to urban migration during the industrial revolution, using Chattanooga as a case study. By the end of the case study, students should be able to describe how industrialization influenced the movement of people from rural to urban areas. This lesson will also serve to encourage critical literacy and engagement with the community.

Instructional materials on local history topics developed by students at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga for use in secondary education classrooms.

This lesson plan examines school desegregation in Chattanooga after the Brown v. Board of Education decision. The purpose of this lesson is for students to gain an understanding of Chattanooga’s complex and prolonged process of school desegregation through reading critically and analyzing primary sources. Students will develop the skills necessary to analyze primary sources and synthesize different perspectives as well as link them to other course materials.

Instructional materials on local history topics developed by students at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga for use in secondary education classrooms.

This is a one-day 60-minute lesson plan that covers the impact of integration at a local level by focusing on the decision and responses to desegregate the University of Chattanooga. The purpose of this lesson is to expand students’ knowledge of Chattanooga’s history through analysis of primary sources. Students will identify major milestones of post-secondary institutional desegregation and describe the impact it had on Chattanooga and its university community in the 100 years following the ratification of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Ninth grade students will work together to examine the primary source excerpts in order to understand desegregation of the University of Chattanooga as a process. This understanding will allow students to more fully grasp the necessity of action to attain implementation. Students will develop an understanding of how cooperation on varied levels and involvement from individuals
and groups with diverse interests result in the attainment of a desired goal. Additionally, having access to primary sources will help students learn to deconstruct different arguments in favor of and opposed to integration. This primary source analysis will also illustrate how multi-faceted a source can be. Students will learn how to mine information, while also appreciating that primary sources can be ambiguous.

Material created for an exhibition curated by the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Special Collections.

Series of five posters describing various aspects of the Civil Rights Movement in Chattanooga Tennessee, including reproductions of primary source materials.
Chattanooga Divided: The Fight for School Desegregation
“Protest for Dignity”: Black Power in Chattanooga
Recovering Perspectives: Desegregation of the University of Chattanooga
White Opposition to a Changing Chattanooga
Chattanooga Youth Activism: How Howard Students Impacted the Civil Rights Movement

What's in the Bag? invites primary students to play with vocabulary common to their environment.

This online activity helps students recognize word patterns by having them sort a series of words into short-vowel word families.

World History Since 1500: An Open and Free Textbook is designed to cover world history from 1500 to the present in 15 chapters. The OER-supported textbook can be downloaded as a pdf or viewed online. The textbook serves to weave insights from many perspectives into stories and narratives that will help students develop a framework to organize and connect ideas, geographical locations, and timelines allowing them to think critically and broadly about the world around them. In addition to helping students master the sequence and scope of world history from 1500, the textbook helps develop empathy for people who live and lived in different parts of the world and during different historical times leading to the creation of empathic and knowledgeable global citizens who are aware of and concerned about the world around them.

Does race still matter, as Cornel West proclaimed in his 1994 book of that title, or do we now live, as others maintain, in a post-racial society? The very notion of what constitutes race remains a complex and evolving question in cultural terms. In this course we will engage this question head-on, reading and writing about issues involving the construction of race and racial identity as reflected from a number of vantage points and via a rich array of voices and genres. Readings will include literary works by such writers as Toni Morrison, Junot Diaz, and Sherman Alexie, as well as perspectives on film and popular culture from figures such as Malcolm Gladwell and Touré.

In this course we will read essays, novels, memoirs, and graphic texts, and view documentary and experimental films and videos which explore race from the standpoint of the multiracial. Examining the varied work of multiracial authors and filmmakers such as Danzy Senna, Ruth Ozeki, Kip Fulbeck, James McBride and others, we will focus not on how multiracial people are seen or imagined by the dominant culture, but instead on how they represent themselves. How do these authors approach issues of family, community, nation, language and history? What can their work tell us about the complex interconnections between race, gender, class, sexuality, and citizenship? Is there a relationship between their experiences of multiraciality and a willingness to experiment with form and genre? In addressing these and other questions, we will endeavor to think and write more critically and creatively about race as a social category and a lived experience.

These course materials were designed for English Composition II at Southwest Tennessee Community College (Memphis, TN) by a team of faculty and support staff (Dr. Adam Sneed, Dr. Loretta McBride, Dr. Thomas Cole, & Vivian Stewart). This project was supported through grants from Southwest Tennessee Community College and the Tennessee Board of Regents (TBR). Course resources include:a Writing and Research Handbook with practical writing instruction, links to reliable online writing resources, "remixed" content from other high-qualiity OER handbooks, and original content that helps students successfully navigate the writing resources available to them at Southwest Tennessee Community College, andfive assignment modules, each centered on one major writing assignment and supported by evaluative rubrics; low-stakes scaffolding assignments (prewritings, quizzes, and worksheets); guided peer review workshops; research guides that link to a mix of OER, OA, and ZTC sources available through library subscription services; and other materials.

This class will focus on the craft of writing genre science fiction. Students write and read science fiction and analyze and discuss stories written for the class. For the first eight weeks, readings in contemporary science fiction accompany lectures and formal writing assignments intended to illuminate various aspects of writing craft as well as the particular problems of writing science fiction. The rest of the term is given to roundtable workshops on student’s stories.

In this course we will read and write about works that explore symbolic encounters in the American landscape. Some of the assigned works look at uneasy encounters between ordinary individuals and animals—wolves, eagles, sandhill cranes—that Americans have invested with symbolic significance; others explore conflicts between the pragmatic American impulse to impose order on unruly nature and the equally American inclination to enshrine the unaltered landscape.

This course focuses on traditional nature writing and the environmentalist essay. Students will keep a Web log as a journal. Writings are drawn from the tradition of nature writing and from contemporary forms of the environmentalist essay.

In this course we will read and write about works that explore symbolic encounters in the American landscape. Some of the assigned works look at uneasy encounters between ordinary individuals and animals—wolves, eagles, sandhill cranes—that Americans have invested with symbolic significance; others explore conflicts between the pragmatic American impulse to impose order on unruly nature and the equally American inclination to enshrine the unaltered landscape.

The reading and writing for this course will focus on what it means to construct a sense of self and a life narrative in relation to the larger social world of family and friends, education, media, work, and community. Readings will include nonfiction and fiction works by authors such as Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, Andre Dubus, Anne Frank, Tim O’Brien, Flannery O’Connor, George Orwell, John Steinbeck, Amy Tan, Tobias Wolff, and Alice Walker. Students will explore the craft of storytelling and the multiple ways in which one can employ the tools of fiction in crafting creative nonfiction and fiction narratives.

During this seminar, students will chronicle their MIT experiences and investigate MIT history and culture. Visits to the MIT archives and museum, along with relevant readings, will supplement students’ experiences as source material for discussion and writing.

The reading and writing in this course will focus on the art of self-narrative or autobiographical writing. Such writing can be crafted in the form of a longer autobiography or of separate, shorter autobiographically-inspired essays. The various forms of autobiographical narrative can both reflect on personal experience and comment on larger issues in society.
This course explores, through reading and writing, what it means to construct a sense of self-and a life narrative-in relation to the larger social world of family and friends, education, media, work, and community. What does it mean to see ourselves as embodying particular ethical values or belonging to a certain ethnic, racial, national or religious group(s)? How do we imagine ourselves within larger “family narrative(s)” and friendship groups? In what ways do we view our identities as connected to and expressed by our educational and work experiences, including experiences at MIT? How do we see ourselves as shaping and shaped by the popular media culture of our society? How do we think about our ethical and social responsibility to our friends, families and communities (large and small)? Readings will include autobiographically-inspired nonfiction and fiction.