2. During Reading Activities

During-Reading Activities

Welcome to the Reader Support Kit for Does My Head Look Big in This? While reading this book you will most likely come across many terms and cultural customs that are unfamiliar to you. To help facilitate your understanding and create a better understanding, I have designed the following pre-reading activities. From the list of five activities, please complete at least one of them prior to reading the book. Remember, for this book you need a total of five activities with at least one from the three different sections: pre, during, and post.

During-Reading Activity 1 - Trust

After finishing chapter 6, where Amal’s parents are called into the principal’s office to discuss her wearing the hijab as Ms. Walsh believes Amal is being forced to wear the hijab. Think about the theme: adults not believing an adolescent. Does that happen regularly? Are many adults prejudiced against adolescents? Gather evidence from your life and demonstrate whether that’s true or not. Responses can be in any form: reflective writing piece, list of events, poster board, news clippings, musical collection, etc. Creativity is encouraged.

During-Reading Activity 2 - What Would You Do?

After finishing chapter 6, where Amal’s parents are called into the principal’s office to discuss her wearing the hijab as Ms. Walsh believes Amal is being forced to wear the hijab. Think about the theme: adults not believing an adolescent. Does that happen regularly? Are many adults prejudiced against adolescents? Gather evidence from your life and demonstrate whether that’s true or not. Responses can be in any form: reflective writing piece, list of events, poster board, news clippings, musical collection, etc. Creativity is encouraged.

During-Reading Activity 3 - Oops! I Didn't Mean to Hit Send!

After reading chapter 24, reflect on how often you communicate via text message, IM, Facebook, etc. Then spend some time playing with your phone’s text messaging program. Notice that you have an option for auto-complete and that often it makes terrible word predictions. Reimagine the texting conversation that occurred between Amal and Adam using auto-complete errors. What could happen? Have you ever had accidental text messages go out? Responses should include the reimagined conversation between the characters and a reflection.

During-Reading Activity 4 - Wait..What!?

After finishing chapter 28 take break and spend some time thinking about the events that just occurred. Amal and Adam are struggling with each other’s different beliefs about relationships. Think about a time in our life, where you or someone you know struggled to understand each other’s perspective and left feeling awkward/uncomfortable. How does this situation compare to yours? What types of things did you do after that incident? For this activity, demonstrate how you would react to the situation Amal and Adam find themselves in. You can demonstrate this to me in a variety of ways: text message conversations with your friends afterwards, collage, Facebook updates that might occur after it, etc. Be honest and react the way you would in their situation.

During-Reading 5 - Get Me Out of Here!

After reading chapter 38, when Leila’s parents come to Amal’s house for help after Leila runs away pause and think about the following statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice: 797,500 children (younger than 18) were reported missing last year out of that 262,000 were abductions meaning roughly 535,000 were children running away. It’s a huge number and happens more frequently than we like to admit. Have you ever thought about running away due to a difficult situation? Any of your friends? Spend some time reflecting on this issue in terms of the novel, your life, and our community. Responses can be varied: paper, poster board, website, collage, movie, music, etc.