HEART OF A SAMURAIby Margi Preus

Visible Thinking Routine - PART THREE, The New World

Purpose: To develop an even greater empathetic response by asking the learner to hypothesize what Manjiro observes, understands, believes, cares about, and questions.

Reference Making Thinking Visible book, pages 178-184

Set up:

  • This routine can be done in groups or as a whole class.
  • Focus on Part Three in Heart of a Samurai, when Manjiro is in The New World – New Bedford and Fairhaven, Massachusetts; pages 117-161.
  • Manjiro is the first Japanese person recorded in America.

QUESTIONS TO ASK:

What can Manjiro see, observe, or notice?Ask students to imagine themselves as Manjiro and describe what they could now see, observe, or notice. This can be done as a simple list of items generated by individuals/groups in writing or by the class aloud and documented by the teacher.

Pages 118-122:

  • Dozens of vessels crowded in the harbor
  • Thousands of oil casks lining the wharf and up the streets into the town
  • Stench of whale oil
  • Tidy houses up the hillside
  • Tall church spires
  • Women and children excited to see their loved ones on the ships
  • No one there to see Manjiro or Captain Whitfield
  • Western clothes, fancy bakery cakes

Pages 122-123

  • Boys making faces and rude gestures to him because he looks different
  • Random stranger scares mean boys away – shows kindness, caring, sympathy
  • Bullies (Tom) and kind children (Job, Terry, Catherine)

Pages 135-136

  • Time is different
  • People greet each other by shaking hands
  • People sing
  • Maple syrup
  • Shops fronts are made of glass
  • Ordinary men carry watches
  • Bread
  • Fields are so big, the farmers have horses to sow wheat
  • Ordinary people can become wealthy
  • Everyone has two names
  • Worship places are called church

What might Manjiro know about, understand, or believe? Ask students to respond to this prompt from Manjiro’s perspective. Make a list of these ideas. If done as a whole class, you might follow up students’ responses with “What makes you say that?” to focus on the evidentiary basis for these statements.

  • Manjiro knows he looks different
  • Pages 135-136 - Understands differences in culture between America and Japan
  • He knows he’s been asked to sit in the pew at church for the colored folk because he makes people uncomfortable
  • He understands that Mrs. Whitfield believes that all men are created equal
  • Page 141 - Knows nothing ever seemed to change in Japan, but in America things were constantly changing - - He believes that maybe he could he could change the world
  • He believes the best way to fit in at school is to succeed in school

What might Manjiro care about? Encourage students not only to state this but also to provide information as to why Manjiro might care about these matters.

  • Manjiro cares that Captain and Mrs. Whitfield are not troubled by others because he looks different
  • He doesn’t want to bring unhappiness to people at church
  • Wants Captain Whitfield to be proud of him
  • Cares about not getting into trouble at school
  • Cares what the other students/children think of him, but he knows he needs to be a strong person and not resort to violence when bullies are picking on him
  • Cares about doing well in school, motivated to learn all he can
  • Page 158 – Still cares about his home in Japan – especially when he’s sad

What might Manjiro wonder about or questions? You may want to ask for reasons and justification behind these.

  • Wonder what his potential is in this New World
  • Wonder if he can ever be accepted because he looks different
  • Wonder if can prove that he is smart
  • Wonder why there aren’t “classes” of people like in Japan
  • Question if he made the right choice to come with Captain Whitfield to America
  • Wonder if he is changing his ways or if he still is “Japanese”
  • Wonder if he will ever make it back home to Japan

Share thinking.

Assessment: In students’ responses, take note to see if they are merely stating the obvious and the most clearly defined aspects of Manjiro or if they are able to infer and hypothesize what might be happening. Are they aware of the complexities of what Manjiro may feel or care about? Are the students’ responses calling for inference still based on evidence and reason?

Provided by Authors In April, Rochester Michigan, 2016

All Visible Thinking Routines are based from Making Thinking Visible by Ron Ritchart, Mark Church, Karin Morrison