That Was Then, This Is Now - Reflective Discussion Materials for Adult ESL

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton makes you feel. That Was Then, This Is Now makes you think. Share the experience with your adult ESL students and make it more than just a read-aloud for your classroom. This is not a pack of quizzes, graphic organizers, or anything like that. I first created this to help me reach a group of students who started out anti-reading, fell in love with The Outsiders, and then wanted to keep going. I didn't want to kill their newfound love for reading, so I kept things discussion based.

Here's what's inside & why:

✅ Anticipation Guides: teacher’s guide + 11 one-pager anticipation guides

These anticipation guides are a fantastic comprehension strategy to invite your students to look deeper into the book and beyond the pages.

That Was Then, This Is Now anticipation guides are a pre-reading approach that fuels introspection into their beliefs and viewpoints while firing up anticipation for the chapter(s) ahead of them.

Students choose numbers to indicate the strength of their agreement, disagreement, or uncertainty with statements that align with the chapters (but without spoilers). These statements help them relate to the story as well as drive curiosity and investment in the storyline.

It doesn't matter if your class is doing a communal read-aloud or independent reading because these anticipation guides make sure they stay involved. I always liked to give my students time to do each guide on their own and then discuss the statements as a class or in small groups, but you can do it your way.

✅ Reflective Response Question Cards: teacher’s page + 11 sets of reflection task cards, totaling 136 cards, covering every unit in the book with varying card counts per section due to the brevity of the chapter itself and/or the need not to include any spoilers

These are the questions that helped make my class almost like a book club, with everyone eager to look for subtext they related to. It was more than mere story time. They wanted to get personal. They looked in the book to understand themselves with the reflective questions I gave them.

Reflecting on personal experience, beliefs, and opinions helps prime students’ minds for what they are about to read or hear. These questions help guide them into making personal connections to the story, even when they originally thought there were none.

These cards are organized by chapter and are in order for using with the book, but of course you can skip any and change the order how you like. I gave careful consideration to avoid major spoilers.

✅Going Deeper Question Cards: teacher’s page, 196 chapter-specific discussion cards

This is what you use when you want them to give more than a surface answer about the plot.

Honestly, just listening in on what your students have to say could be the very best part of your day.

While the book itself is thought-provoking, these discussion cards are bound to get philosophical debate going in your classroom. With 196 discussion cards total, your students' group discussions will remind you why you love teaching.

⚠️ NOTE: There's intentionally no answer key; these discussions thrive on different interpretations. There isn't a single correct response. The answers can go far beyond mere comprehension. Your students' varied perspectives and interpretations will depend a lot on their own lived experiences, and there isn't an answer key that could possibly match that.

EVERYTHING IN THIS PACK WAS WRITTEN FOR ADULT ESL STUDENTS

Originally designed for my high-intermediate to advanced ESL adult learners, nothing in here has cartoonish clipart, children's content, or shallow water questions.

⚠️ Book not included. Support the author by purchasing her books.