To teach Common Core 7th grade English Language Arts standards R.RL.01-4 I bought class copies of the book for students to follow along with the audio book in class. We stopped frequently to discuss passages that exemplified a theme, or to point out character traits and terms that students struggled with (connotation vs denotation).
There are many excellent, commercially available reading guides for this book and while I bought two, I ended up making some of my own materials when my students needed something more. These I've shared with you.
ANTICIPATORY SET: To introduce the idea of keeping a "Dictionary of Terms," students first were asked to each submit 3 (three) terms, with definitions, that they used everyday. They had to be terms with which they thought I might not be familiar. I then compiled them and created a "Class Dictionary," with student initials noted as the contributors of each term. They LOVED reading the dictionary and then keeping an Outsiders Dictionary of their own. This required a bit of effort on my part. I was careful to only include terms that were appropriate to the classroom, and many were discarded for lack of a definition. I also researched each online. The meaning of some of the terms, such as "dope," had changed considerably since it's original use. Each class period got its own Dictionary. They particularly loved reading each other's dictionaries and discussing some radically different definitions. In the original for each class period, I made sure to credit each student with their full name at the end. For privacy reasons, I deleted that page before posting here.
