Welcome to the Outside City
We recently completed our novel study of The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. If you have never read the book, it is a must! The students absolutely get into it, and never want to stop reading it once we begin. After reading the novel and completing all of the assignments and assessments, the students created their own "Outside Cities" using the names of the characters as the street names. Each business, shop, venue in their city had to be named using characteristics from the characters in the novel. The students loved coming up with names, and they were very creative, too!
Some of the examples of places of business the students came up with are Bob's Bling Jewelry Shop, Muscles by Dally, Ponyboy's Book Club, Two-Bit's Comedy Act Nightclub, Cherry's Sunset Grill, etc. I had a wonderful time walking aroune the classroom as they worked in their collaborative pairs on this assignment.
Below are a couple of examples of the projects. One is of a group of boys drawing their Outside City on poster board. Let me tell you, they took great pride in their artistic abilities. The finished product was absolutely wonderful! The other picture is of a group who decided to make an edible Outside City. They did a fantastic job, and all of the other students in the classroom loved it!
The Outside City Project is not in my novel study because I got this activity from a former collegue. However, my "The Outsiders" Novel Study Bundle has everything you need to teach The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. Included in the bundle you will find the novel study guide complete with handouts and assessments, a "Talk is Tuff" Journal that has a journal prompt for each chapter, a PowerPoint Presentation to use while teaching the novel, and a review game to use prior to giving the final assessment.
