The Bird of Happiness

Additional Information

Life and culture in Tibet

1. Tibetan landscape
2. Climate in Tibet
3. Images of Tibetan Life
4. Tibetan People
5. Barley and barley bread
6. Tibet Oral History
7. Tibetan food
8. Religion in Tibet
9. Images for Tibetan Mythological creatures

Compilations of Tibetan folk tales

1. Folk Tales and Ethics-1
2. Folk Tales and Ethics-2
3. More folk tales
4. More Tibetan stories

What is this story about

• About a Tibetan village where people where poor and suffering (discuss reasons and the role of natural resources in human life)
• A boy's search to help his village
• About the boy's virtues, ethics and how that helps the village
• We are introduced to the customs in the village
• Names and characters in the Tibetan mythology

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNAuvquh4O4

Language used in the story

• Translated text (talk about the Sino Tibetan family of languages)
• Who is the translator?
• Some vocabulary specific to mountains
• Some vocabulary which is a slang is also used (for grandfather, etc)
• Written in the past tense
• Third person narrative

Teaching Outlines

Idea 1 - Life, climate and culture of Tibet

1. Context of the story -Where is Tibet?

1. Life conditions
   1. Tibetan customs and practices

Activity 1

1. Give the students a set of pictures and can they tell a story
2. See the following link for how you can tell a story from photographs.

Idea 2 - Discussing the story

1. The key actors
2. The key ideas
3. What belief systems

Activity 1

1. Students can make a mind map of what they picked up from the story
2. Share the mind maps and discuss
3. Focus on words used, understanding of vocabulary
4. Discuss multiple interpretations

Activity 2

1. Make a series of pictures and role play and tell the story
2. Reflect on the belief systems shared
3. Sections of the stories can also be given to students for rewriting/ interpretation

Activity 3 Telling a story from images

1. Give the series of images of a scree
2. Ask students to write a story
3. Using images of scree to write a picture book

| For a sample of a story using pictures of a scree, click here.

Idea 4 - Folk Tales and how they are organized

1. Comparison with other folk tales locally

Activity 1

1. Show other nature cultures/ mountain cultures stories and make a comparison of the ideas

Activity 2

1. Translate one of the Kannada stories into English with images