Lesson Two - The Snow Woman

Introduction

Lesson One - "The Snow Woman"
Duration - 4 blocks (4 x 80 min + homework)

"This was not the first time Lha-mo had seen the trail of a yeti, for all her life had been lived here in the high Himalayas, and she had grown up with the knowledge that among these thousands of kilometres of snow there lived a great creature unknown to the rest of the world." - "The Snow Woman"

In the second lesson of this unit, the Yeti, its mythology and links to humans will be considered, in terms of those who have a passion to study it and those who have a passion to hunt it . . .

Resources

Documents
THE YETI
"The Snow Woman"

thesis planner

Websites
Yeti: Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas
The Yeti: Asia's Abominable Snowman 

VIDEO
Mystery of the Yeti Solved?

Lesson

Explore the yeti-related web sites on the Resources page.
Read the article, "The Yeti".

The Snow Woman - by Norah Burke
Norah Burke was born in Bedford, England in 1907.  Immediately after, she and her mother joined her father in India where he was working as a Forest Officer in the foothills of the Himalaya.  The author was raised in the jungle, often more than 100 km from civilization, and her earliest playmates were jungle animals, especially the elephants her family used for transportation.  

The myth of the yeti, the great snow creature of the Himalaya, traditionally conveys the impression that it is a monster to be feared and hunted down.  But what would happen to the legend if we were to discover that the yeti are more like us than they are different?

• Read the short story, "The Snow Woman".

Assignment 1

 (20 marks)

Open a new Word document. Label it E201U2L2surname
In this document, complete the assignment outlined below.
Submit this assignment using the Dropbox Folder for U2L2 Snow Woman thesis.

Consider the unit question, "What idea does the author develop regarding the significance of ruling passion in an individual's life?"

You are not going to write an essay in response to the question, but an introductory paragraph for that essay ONLY, set up in the following manner:

• generalization - catch the reader's attention (at least 1 sentence) What can you say about ruling passion? Will you define it? Provide a quotation that speaks to the essence of it? How will you introduce this topic?
• title, genre, author - suggestion of organization and details (at least 3 sentences) short story, Norah Burke, "The Snow Woman" - the hint of organization will be the kinds of things you will discuss in our essay. What will you say about Lha Mo to explore your thesis? If you are going to discuss, fame, fortune, and family, for example, those ideas will be part of this section.
• thesis statement (at least 1 sentence) How are you answering the question, "What idea does the author develop regarding the significance of ruling passion in an individual's life?" Remember that a thesis must be "a general truth about life - with a narrowed focus". That means that your idea must work for you, for me, for your neighbour, for Lha-Mo. The narrowed focus is to prevent you from writing "Ruling passion is different for everyone." While that IS a general truth about life, there is no argument to it. How can you narrow that down and answer the question?

 Use the thesis planner to craft your thesis statement!!

Assignment 2

(100 marks)

Open the Word document "Essay Skeleton".
Save it as E201U2L2 Snow Woman skeleton
In this document, complete the assignment outlined below.
Submit this assignment using the Dropbox Folder for U2L2 Snow Woman skeleton.

Rather than writing a formal literary essay, you are going to create a skeleton essay by filling in the spaces in the chart. Notice that the body paragraphs follow this format: (NEXT)

• New idea - provide a topic sentence for the paragraph that is related to your thesis statement
• Evidence - provide evidence in the form of a strong quotation or paraphrase from the story to support your statement
• eXplanation - explain how the detail you have chosen proves your thesis to be true
• Evidence - provide evidence in the form of a strong quotation or paraphrase from the story to support your statement
• eXplanation - explain how the detail you have chosen proves your thesis to be true
• Evidence - provide evidence in the form of a strong quotation or paraphrase from the story to support your statement
• eXplanation - explain how the detail you have chosen proves your thesis to be true
• Transition - provide a transition from this paragraph to the next

EACH paragraph, then, will follow the "principle of thirds" - you create a statement, and then provide three pieces of evidence to support it, evidence for which you provide explanations.

Use your thesis statement from the paragraph you wrote in Assignment Two to begin your Essay Skeleton.

Click for an example of an essay skeleton for the Macbeth essay in the Exemplars document.

Conclusion

In this lesson, you considered how the quest of an individual's ruling passion changed that individual's perspective, causing that person to reflect on what matters most in life.