Welcome to Nowhere ends with a cliffhanger. The family moves, once again, to the UK to get medical help for Nadia, but we don’t know what happens to them after that. Many questions are left unanswered, especially regarding the futures of Musa, Omar, and Eman as they get older. This activity allows students to use their imaginations to infer what the family may have faced, the challenges they had to overcome, and the things they may have accomplished.
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The story ends when Omar and his family move to the UK. How do you think the lives of Omar, Musa, and Eman would change? Create a storyboard that depicting what their lives would look like after a few years.
Due Date:
Objective: Create a three cell spider map that depicts the future of the three oldest children, Musa, Eman, and Omar.
Student Instructions:
Explain what you expect students to include in their endings, such as character growth, believable challenges, and realistic futures. Setting clear guidelines helps students focus their creativity and ensures their work aligns with your objectives.
Demonstrate how to brainstorm possible outcomes for each character by thinking aloud and jotting ideas on the board. This gives students a starting point and builds their confidence in developing unique storylines.
Encourage students to reference events, character traits, or challenges from the story to make their endings more authentic. Using textual evidence strengthens critical thinking and deepens their understanding.
Remind students to include meaningful images and thoughtful sentences for each cell of their storyboard or spider map. Combining art and writing engages different learning styles and makes the activity more dynamic.
Organize short sharing sessions where students present their endings and receive feedback from peers. Peer feedback builds a collaborative classroom environment and helps students refine their ideas.
The 'Welcome to Nowhere Finish the Story' activity engages students in imagining what happens to Omar, Musa, and Eman after the novel’s ending. Students create a spider map or storyboard to illustrate and describe the children’s possible futures, encouraging inference and creative thinking.
Students complete the spider map by starting the assignment, labeling each cell with a child's name, creating an image for each, and writing a descriptive sentence about each imagined future. This helps students develop inference and visualization skills.
Encourage students to use textual evidence, consider the characters’ past experiences, and think about realistic challenges and opportunities they might face. Brainstorming and class discussions can also support deeper inference.
Imagining life beyond a story builds empathy, inference, and creative writing skills. It helps students connect more personally with characters and understand themes like change, resilience, and hope.
This activity is designed for students in grades 6–8, and can be completed individually or with a partner to foster collaboration and creative thinking.