Holly Thompson's Blog, page 23

Wakaejima Low Tide

Last night was a full moon hidden by clouds. This morning's run was in a warm rain along the beach with the tide receding in a long pull, well exposing the rocks of Wakaejima (和賀江島) the remains of a Kamakura-era (thirteenth century) artificial port where boats were moored. 



Low tide at Wakaejima makes for tidepool heaven and many people venture out to the rocks to gather shellfish.



And sometimes, the Waka rocks yield a wee poem (on Notegraphy):



Besides shellfish, some folks gather crabs. 



Wakaejima makes a brief appearance in my novel The Language Inside when Kamakura-raised Emma and her friend Madoka are walking along the beach before Emma leaves for the U.S.

***

we waded through shallows
over rippled sand
staring at those rocks
heaped hundreds of years ago
to make the safe harbor
we'd studied in school

and as we stared at that history
which I'd come to think of as mine
Madoka said softly

amerika-jin ni nacchau--
              you'll turn into an American

***
Wakaejima at full-moon low tide draws everyone to explore. The next few days will bring perfect mid-day low tides for tidepooling. 

Mathangi Subramanian Top 10 Books About Bullying

I was pleased to be pointed to this guest post by Mathangi Subramanian--Top Ten Books About Bullying--on Unleashing Readers.


Here is the opening:

My Top Ten YA Novels About Bullying by Mathangi SubramanianGrowing up the bespectacled, bookish, brown-skinned daughter of Indian immigrants, I underwent my share of bullying. But while I was writing Bullying: The Ultimate Teen Guide, memories of witnessing—rather than experiencing—bullying loomed large. Most often, I was reminded of my brief tenure as a public school teacher, when I watched young people I cared about both act like and suffer from bullies . . . Read the entire blog post here.
The post makes some powerful points about empathy and stories as a means of walking in other people's shoes, and, of course, includes her top ten books about bullying. Have a look--it's a powerfully diverse reading list. I'm thrilled that Orchards is included, and I look forward to diving into all of the books on this list. Thank you to Mathangi Subramanian, author of Bullying: The Ultimate Teen Guide, for her post.

Dragon's Mouth!

Dragons are woven into the mythology of the hills, rivers, coast and temples of the Kamakura and Enoshima areas where I have lived in Japan for nearly 20 years, and my next verse novel, Dragon's Mouth, threads this mythology into a story about a non-Japanese boy struggling to find his way in a Japanese community.

Ceiling painting by Junsaku Koizumi at the temple Kenchoji in Kamakura
I'm happy to share the announcement that appeared in Publishers Lunch on May 12:

Holly Thompson's DRAGON'S MOUTH, verse novel about an American boy's experience as a "stinking foreigner" in a small fishing community in Japan, in which the challenge of fitting in and pain of being an outsider rings true across all cultures, to Laura Godwin at Holt Children's, by Jamie Weiss Chilton at Andrea Brown Literary Agency (World).

A huge thank you to my agent Jamie Weiss Chilton for believing in Dragon's Mouth. I'm so looking forward to working on this book with editor Laura Godwin at Holt. I'm poised and ready to plunge into the dragon's mouth of revisions!

For a wonderful photo of artist Junsaku Koizumi painting that dragon, see this photo.

We Need Diverse Books

Are you following the #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign? See the WeNeedDiverseBooks Tumblr page about the campaign and scroll through all the reasons why we need diverse books.


My added comments to all the many wonderful reasons listed on the campaign Tumblr are that we need diverse books because ethnicity does not always match cultural identity and we need books to reflect that reality. We need books set in Asia and other parts of the world underrepresented in English-language children's and young adult literature. We need many more children's books in translation, and we need books featuring intercultural, bilingual, border-crossing kids and teens reflecting the world we live in today. 

Check out the Tumblr. Join the campaign for more diverse books published every year. 

Flowing: A Blackout Poem

I've been enjoying following Kevin's Meandering Mind and all his great April poetry posts. Recently he posted Blackout Poetry Interactive about the New York Times poetry interactive. Thanks to Kevin's post, I explored the New York Times Searching for Poetry in Prose and created three blackout poems. Although I'm pretty shy about sharing my fresh writing with the world, I also shared them on Twitter.

FLOWING

Here are links to all three poems:




Blackout poetry is perfect for all sorts of groups and classrooms--it's a great creative brain workout that anyone can engage in. And once you create one blackout poem, you'll want to do another.

Of my three poems, I was most satisfied with "Flowing."

Here you can see the before and after for "Flowing"--first, the article and the blackout page.


Next, you can see the words I selected to create my poem (in this particular interactive, you can select up to 15 words).



Give it a try and share your blackout poetry.

COETAIL Final Project--Creative Writing Moves Online

Another post toward my Certificate in Educational Technology and Information Literacy (COETAIL)

Midway through the fall 2013 university semester, a family emergency took me to the U.S. Of the six courses I was teaching at a Japanese university, five were effectively handed to other university instructors under my supervision; one course, Elements of Fiction/Creative Writing--Fiction, I retained full control of. This 15-week creative writing course, which transitioned from a traditional face-to-face classroom course to an online course with very little time for the shift became by default my COETAIL final course project.

GOALS
My aims in moving the course online were as follows:

Smoothly transition students in my 15-week Advanced English (TOEIC scores 600+) content-based creative writing course from a traditional face-to-face classroom to an online WikiSpaces virtual classroom for the remaining six weeks of the course.Provide opportunities and motivation for students to apply the four main language skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking) in an online community while meeting my obligations to provide to students a challenging, enriching and useful university Advanced English course.Effectively guide students through short fiction writing process steps--from story starts to drafts of short stories to polished, class publishable, complete short stories.  
TOOLS
Language Lab
I was able to reserve a language lab for the class for the remainder of the course--this provided computer access for all students during class time; the lab was available to my students during class time even when I was not present.

WikiSpaces
I hastily created a WikiSpaces site for the course and uploaded weekly assignments, adapting them to make use of comment features. Students, guided by the syllabus on the site, were assigned weekly writing exercises to complete and post in the comments section and were required to comment on other student work. Outlines, character and detail tasks were posted via comments; story drafts and final stories were emailed to me then posted to WikiSpaces pages as PDFs. Peer evaluations took place in a hybrid manner with a substitute teacher present in the room.

iMovie and YouTube
Using iMovie I created six videos--one for each class meeting during the course weeks 9-15 when I was away. I uploaded a new video to YouTube each week and linked to these from the WikiSpaces page. Four of the six videos were of me speaking to the students "directly." Two videos  featured only my voice and images.

Email 
I received completed story drafts by email and uploaded those to the site as PDFs for student commenting.

Word comment features 
I used Word comment boxes to make teacher comments directly on student story drafts and sent the story with comments to students via email attachment.

Teacher comments on student story draft using Word Comment features

Google Doc (forms) for a final evaluation
The course evaluation for students was created via Google Doc forms.
Student Course Evaluation created with Google FormsINTRODUCTION AND IMPLEMENTATION 
In weeks 7 and 8, my last face-to-face sessions with the students, the class moved to the language lab. There we did a Twine interactive fiction exercise to prime students for being creative and open-minded with their story plots in my absence. I also introduced my students to WikiSpaces and directed students to the syllabus on the site, which indicated which site page to visit for instructions on class tasks and homework assignments.  From week 9 the course was online, and students were expected to keep up with the weekly schedule as outlined in the syllabus on the WikiSpaces site. During weeks 12-15 the university determined that students needed to be in the language lab with a substitute teacher present during class hours; that teacher functioned as an attendance taker and monitor but did not teach.

Each week I uploaded a new video to be viewed during the class hours each week. I tried to be online for students who were online during class time, although this was not always possible due to the time difference between Yokohama and Boston. I commented promptly, provided feedback via WikiSpaces comments, and chased down students who had not completed the week's tasks with WikiSpaces messages and email. Most of the students stayed on schedule. When I received story drafts via email, I uploaded those as PDFs to WikiSpaces for student commenting, and provided detailed feedback using Word comment boxes.


Peer Evaluations Video for Week 13
STUDENT REACTIONS
Students expressed mixed feelings about the course going online: most were disappointed over losing face-to-face time with their teacher and classmates.

I really like the atmosphere the class with Thompson, not the online. I hope Thompson coming back and taking your class again!!Spending more time with teacher onsite would be great. Other than that, almost everything was satisfying.The class with Thompson (Week1-9) was very fun. Though I had a dread feeling to read a book written in English and write my own stories first, I finally complete all of class task without any difficulties. Talking about online weeks(week10-11), I got panic because there were no substitute teachers in the class time when I went to the LL2 class for few weeks. Shareing information with other classmates, I tried to do my task. It was very hard time for me.I think the plan was really good. Reading many types of story helped us to how to write story. Then we discussed about the story and could think about them deeply. We write story start and discuss with others and could help each others to make the stories better. And finally we choose one out of the story starts and finished up writing. I think this was good way to motivate students to write story The unexpect thing happened and we got online class but somewhat we made it. Thank you!For the first 1-9 weeks: The course was challenging because my imagination was challenged each week with writing different kinds of short stories. I enjoyed the discussion with Prof.Thompson about the stories that we read because she explained in details the difficult parts of the stories and challenged us with questions about the stories we read. For weeks 10-11: I had difficulty managing my time at home to doing the assignments and I tried my best to be on time with the submission in order to be able to participate with the discussions online. I thought that the examples of the videos that Prof.Thompson showed online were helpful in writing my outline and character details. For weeks 12-15: I was late with my submission and so I was not able to participate well in the discussions but I tried to make up during the class hours. I regret that I was not able to show my final story on time with my classmates.Students watched all the videos I posted, some videos more than once, and found that they were all "helpful" or "somewhat helpful" to their writing.

Both in the face-to-face sessions and online, most students were positive about teacher and peer feedback on their writing, some even a bit surprised by how helpful the peer feedback was:

Not only your feedback, but also other students comment helps me to get new perspectives and ideas in the story. In fact, my friend feedback really helped me to write a story. Through peer workshop, I can compared my and my friends' writings. Also, my friends have great imaginations which I never think of, so that I was very stimulated.I liked peer workshops and discussing in the class because that made me realize what is needed to my story or we could give advises to others to make their story better. Also sometimes there were big hints came from the little chat or workshops sometimes.What I had been said from my friend for the final story was same as Thompson, so that was very helpful. I might be able to improve my story by peer evaluations.
OUTCOME
Although students and I were saddened to have lost class time together, in many ways I met and exceeded my goals. I was able to continue guiding these students in creating original short stories despite my location outside Japan. Students had signed up for a creative writing course with me, and as promised, the course continued for the full 15 weeks under my guidance. The resulting student stories revealed significant writing skills advancement from the beginning to the end of the course including a solid grasp of the elements of fiction, as well as the mechanics of English-language fiction writing.

EVIDENCE
The evidence of student learning is readily apparent when comparing the initial story starts submitted toward the beginning of the course to the final short stories posted on the WikiSpaces site in week 15. All eleven students completed the course, most with strong grade outcomes.

REFLECTION
I would have preferred to have more time to plan out and design an online or hybrid course. Changes I would definitely make in a comparable situation in the future:
At the time of transition, I selected WikiSpaces for its ease of use and because I had previous WikiSpaces experience. In the future, I would evaluate various options to determine the best system and develop my site with more links, resources and images.A student learning network that allows submission of documents and eliminates email submission of student work would help ease the teacher work load.Student-to-student commenting could be even further utilized to enhance the classroom interaction and a sense of community.Introducing students to Gmail would enable the class to make full use of Google Docs. Google Hangouts or other form of real time meetings could be used for further opportunities for EFL student speaking and class interaction. Setting online "office hours" would enable students to consult with the teacher about their writing projects in real time.An online publishing opportunity via a class blog would enable students to share their work beyond the classroom.  SHARING WITH COLLEAGUES
Several university colleagues, including my superior and the teacher monitor in weeks 12-15, were given access to the WikiSpaces site and were able to see my online teaching methods and approach. Videos were made public via YouTube. Several of my COETAIL blog posts have focused on this project.

WHAT I LEARNED
A successful EFL course requires face time and consultation time with a teacher. Creating online face time is critical even for an EFL course in which the main focus is writing. Online office hours are essential for an online course in writing. Many of the methods I employed for the online portion of the course I would incorporate into future traditional classroom courses. I would certainly use a WikiSpaces site or some other student learning network even for a traditional course taught in a Japanese university classroom without computers; there are so many benefits regardless of whether the course is traditional or online.

WAS THIS REDEFINITION?

Ruben R. Puentedura, http://www.hippasus.com/rrpweblog/
It is difficult to say where this online teaching experiment fell on the SAMR model. Some components were augmentation, some modification and some were possibly redefinition. The WikiSpaces page introduced student control and pacing, lively commenting, and a place for the story drafts and final stories to "live" for students to revisit. Creating teacher videos for each week's course content meant I was distilling a message into a short format that could be played and replayed by students--a helpful tool in an EFL classroom where repetition can lead to mastery. Student comments on the WikiSpaces site were insightful, sometimes more so than feedback offered in face-to-face group situations; commenting online seemed to augment and in some cases improve on face-to-face feedback. Putting the class evaluation on Google Forms means the responses are saved online and easy to reference for future planning.

Certainly the course changed as a result of being offered online. Perhaps ideally this course would live on as a hybrid course--with some content and meetings online and other meetings face-to-face, since there are clear merits to both approaches. For the course to be taught most successfully whether traditional, hybrid or online in the future, careful consideration would need to be given to which student learning network is most appropriate, how to provide meaningful speaking opportunities during any online sessions, and how best to share the final short stories publicly to showcase the students' impressive fiction writing accomplishments.

I shall end with a final student comment:

First of all, this was my first try to write a fictional story. I have never tried it before, and I was somewhat worried. Nevertheless, I came to this far, and today is the last day of the course. It was a great time to study this course.

Poet Friends for Life--A Tapestry Poem for Patrick Heller

Another post toward my Certificate in Educational Technology and Information Literacy (COETAIL)

Lately I've been reading posts on Kevin's Meandering Mind, which is where I learned about the Tapestry App. Thinking this would be a great tool in the poetry classroom, I decided to give it a whirl.

To test the app, I was determined to write a new poem. It's National Poetry Month, after all. I wrote a poem about feeling sorry for myself here in chilly New England and missing the cherry blossoms in Japan.

I thought the resulting, somewhat humorous, poem would be my Tapestry poem, but as it turned out the poem was long, and the ending relied on viewing the title and poem in its entirety on a single page. I realized that I needed to start over again to discover a poem more suited to the Tapestry format of clicking or tapping to advance the poem.

As I was brainstorming ideas, I received an update about a fundraiser for my friend Patrick Heller who is trying to raise money so that he can receive an expensive form of treatment (Peptide Receptor Radionuclide Therapy) for his neuroendocrine tumors. Patrick and I both taught at the same Japanese university for several years, and both being writers from Kamakura and poetry lovers, we always had plenty to talk about. I began to think about his fundraiser, and my personal learning network--especially all the individuals I connect with online--and I determined to use my experiment with Tapestry to share Patrick's story and help him toward his goal of treatment in hopes that he may share more years with his children. 
So, with thanks to Tapestry, here is my poem: Poet Friends for Life--A Tapestry Poem for Patrick Heller. I hope all of you will share it with other poet, teacher and culture weaving friends.

COETAIL: "Lotus Wanting" on Notegraphy

Another post toward my Certificate in Educational Technology and Information Literacy (COETAIL)

There are lots of apps for poets, and recently more and more poets are sharing poems via apps. I came across the Notegraphy app thanks to A Year of Reading,  Kevin's Meandering Mind and Carol's Corner.

Notegraphy, a web and mobile app, combines text sharing and graphic design--perfect for poetry classrooms, I thought. I decided to give the app a try.

I used the NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month) Day 2 prompt to write a poem about a myth. In my brainstorming I thought about how I'd believed what some people had told me--that lotus buds make a sound when they open, and how, despite my background in biology, I wanted so much for that myth to be true and investigated for myself at a lotus pond at dawn.

Here is the resulting poem, "Lotus Wanting. From start to finish, brainstorming, writing and publishing using Notegraphy, it took me about one hour.


Notegraphy was easy to use. There was a limited variety of designs to choose from, so hopefully more will be added. The app photo for sharing unfortunately centered all the text, but I was pleased that the published poem appears left justified, just as I wanted it to be. Of course I'll continue to revise and tinker with my "Lotus Wanting" poem, but it was a great motivator to use Notegraphy. I look forward to using this app with poetry students!

April Means Poetry!

Another post toward my Certificate in Educational Technology and Information Literacy (COETAIL)

April is National Poetry Month in the U.S. Ringing in the month, my poems "The Clearing," "Migraine" and "Contract" appear on the Young Adult Review Network (YARN) as the opening post in YARN's month-long celebration of poetry.



Teachers and poets not only in the U.S. but all around the world can take advantage of the poetry riches available online over the next month.

There are various participatory programs to get poets of all ages motivated to write a poem each day throughout the month of April. Check out NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month) and the 2014 April PAD Challenge on Robert Lee Brewer's blog.

I'm in for a lot of poetry writing this month. Are you? How about challenging yourself and your students to write a poem a day for the month?

Thinkfinity offers 30 Poems You Can Write for National Poetry Month.

Poet to Poet offers a chance for young poets to write poems in response to poems shared in videos of award-winning poets reading in a new multimedia project.

NPR's Tell Me More offers a monthlong poetry program Muses and Metaphors of Twitter poems using the hashtag #TMMPoetry and residents of the U.S. can participate in New York City's #NYCPoetweet.

Jama's Alphabet Soup lists so many amazing Kidlitosphere resources.

You can share your STEM haiku on STEM Friday.

Author Amok will be focusing on Source Poems.

On The Miss Rumphius Effect, poems will be paired with children's books in Poetry and Children's Books--Perfectly Paired.

Poetry for Children will feature a Poem Movie each day and begins today with "Which Ones Will Float?"

The Poem Farm  will feature a new thrift store poem each day.

There is 30 Poets/30 Days on GottaBook starting with poems by Jack Prelutsky and Alice Shertle.

You can follow the progress of the 2014 Kidlitosphere Progressive Poem as it grows.

Poets.org offers 30 Ways to Celebrate and Poem in your Pocket Day on April 24.

YAReviewNet will feature poetry posts all month.

And be sure to see The Children's Poet Laureate Monthly Book Picks for books to add to your classroom or school library, and the wonderful Poetry Suitcase site by Janet Wong.

Share your favorite April poetry resources!

COETAIL: Nahoko Uehashi's MORIBITO and J-E Translation

Another post toward my Certificate in Educational Technology and Information Literacy (COETAIL)


This week at the Bologna Children's Book Fair the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Awards were announced, and the 2014 author winner is Japanese fantasy author Nahoko Uehashi. 


Cultural anthropologist Nahoko Uehashi's Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit captivated me when I first read it--her fantasy world derives from ancient Japan and is rich with cultural and ethnobiological detail. That her complex work was accessible and moving in the English language owes much to the deft work of translator Cathy Hirano and the creative and thorough editing by Arthur A. Levine editor Cheryl Klein (visit her blog). Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit won the Mildred L. Batchelder Award for outstanding translation in 2009, and Moribito II: Guardian of the Darkness was awarded a Batchelder Honor in 2010. Kaisei-sha is the publisher of the Moribito series in Japan. Congratulations to all! 
Currently Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit and Moribito II: Guardian of the Darkness are the only books in the series available in English, but, thanks to this Hans Christian Andersen award for Nahoko Uehashi, hopefully more of her books will become available in English. 
*****
In the classroom
Some material for teachers to share with students on the Moribito books and on the fascinating process involved in translating these complex novels might include the following:
Moribito Wiki
Moribito Review on Worlds of Words
Interview with Cathy Hirano: Young Adult Fantasy in Translation on the Society of Writer's Editors and Translators site
Editing Children's Literature in Translation: An Interview with Cheryl Klein, on pages 4-7 of this SCBWI Japan Fall 2008 Newsletter 
One Passage, Six Translations: Nahoko Uehashi written by Avery Fischer Udagawa after an SCBWI Japan Translation Day event held at Yokohama International School at which Cathy Hirano was the featured speaker
Catching Up with Cathy Hirano by Alexander O. Smith
Interview with Nahoko Uehashi about the anime production

On the general subject of translation of literature from Japanese to English
Eight Ways to Say You, Horn Book Magazine piece by Cathy Hirano

Teacher Trevor Kew's write-up How Would You Translate Arigato: Alexander O. Smith visits Yokohama International School 
Translator in the Classroom  by Avery Fischer Udagawa
Japanese to English Translation Basics by Kathryn Hemmann
Translating Culture to Kids with Kyoto-based former librarian Paul Evans
Translator interviews and posts on the Tomo: Friendship Through Fiction blog
The SCBWI Japan Translation Group Blog ihatov.wordpress.com
*****
Surely the Hans Christian Anderson Award will result in more well-deserved worldwide attention on Nahoko Uehashi and her works. Let's hope there is also a powerful ripple effect with more attention paid to translation into English of Japanese literature for children and young adults.