School of Education
Jen Thompson
Lecturer
BSocSci NE, GDipEd GradDipPsych WAustIT MA (Professional Communication) Deakin
Jen Thompson
Bio
Jen has taught in Northwestern Ontario, Western Australia and New South Wales and is a registered Reading Recovery teacher. She began lecturing in Literacy at the School of Education, Charles Sturt University in 2007. She holds a Master of Arts (Professional Communication) degree and is currently completing a Doctor of Creative Arts through the University of Technology Sydney. Her initial Social Science degree and two postgraduate degrees are in the disciplines of Psychology, Education and Counselling.
Jen began writing professionally in 1992 as a scriptwriter for CBCRadio and TVOntario. Thirty five of her children’s television scripts have been produced and many have aired in Canada, Ireland, Namibia, China and Australia. Her program 'The Wall' was nominated for a Gemini Award for Excellence in Children's Television Broadcasting in 1994. Jen has written for ABC Television (Playschool) and ABCRadio. She has had a number of short stories and poems published in anthologies in Australia and Canada. She has edited three books: Cybertale (an anthology of fantasy writing by young authors), Lines from Barellan (oral histories and poems from the Barellan museum writing workshops) and FourWEleven (an anthology of prose and poetry). In 2004, she wrote The Shakespeare Ladies: A history of the Wagga Wagga Shakespeare Club to mark the centenary of the oldest Shakespearean reading club in the world.
Her current research project, ‘Cyberwriters’, explores digital writing in a variety of genres with creative writers of all ages from Primary School to adult. Jen has worked in community and school workshops with the Museum of the Riverina, Booranga Writers Centre and Broken Hill Writers Centre on projects to bring creative digital stories to publication. The Cyberwriters project was presented at the Toronto Reading Conference and included in the Canadian textbook, Books Media and the Internet: Children’s Literature for Today’s Classrooms, (2010) Shelley S. Peterson, David Booth and Carol Jupiter (Eds.) Winnipeg: Portage and Main.
Research
- Creative non-fiction
- Multiliteracies – Learning by Design
- Community Writing Projects
- Reading and writing processes and pedagogy
- Literature
Teaching
- Primary English Curriculum
- Children's Literature
- Developmental Psychology
Professional Engagement
- Member Wagga Wagga City Council Cultural Advisory Board
- Member Australian Society of Authors
- Member Association for the Study of Australian Literature
- Member Primary English Teachers Association
- Member Australian Literacy Educators Association
- Member Wagga Wagga Writers Writers
- Archival Secretary, Wagga Wagga Shakespeare Club