Two Old Women by Velma Wallis: A Homeschool Literature Unit Study

Tolman Hall Literature Unit Studies are designed to give you the flexibility to design your own curriculum based on your children’s interests while still providing a solid foundation in literature. If used as designed, your children will learn and understand the literary concepts essential for doing well on standardized tests such as the SAT Literature Subject Test and the ACT Reading Test. Even more important, Tolman Hall Literature Studies will open your students’ eyes to ideas, concepts, and deeper meanings that they may previously have skimmed over in cursory literature studies and in their reading for pleasure.

Each Unit Study provides background information about the author, several possible unit study schedules, a plot overview, and individual lessons. The lessons each contain a reading assignment, a summary and analysis of the assignment, a vocabulary lesson, a reading quiz, and short essay questions. Depending on your needs and schedule, you can customize the lessons to fit your students’ needs. As the teacher, you can read along with your students, or if you’re short on time, you can keep up by simply reading the summaries and analyses of each lesson, which give enough information for you to discuss the assignment with your student.

Many homeschooling parents teach more than one student at a time, and with Tolman Hall Unit Studies, you can teach the same work of literature at several grade levels. For instance, you could assign the same reading to students in grades 7 and 9 but assign the 9th grader more difficult writing assignments and more mature end-of-unit projects. In this way, your whole family can discuss the same books and authors while still meeting grade-appropriate requirements.

Two Old Women is a story based on an Athabaskan Indian legend about two old women abandoned by their tribe during a brutal winter famine. The Athabaskan Indians lived in the upper Yukon River Valley in Alaska, and the legend was passed from mother to daughter until Velma Wallis dramatized it in this suspenseful and inspirational novel.

Published in 1993, Two Old Women won the Western States Book Award in 1993 and the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award in 1994.