Kelsey+Lorenzen+-+1945

__Diary Entry:__ Entry of an American Daughter writing to her mother about the year the Second World War ended 1945.

Dear Mother,

Oh what a start to the year it has been! Never would I have imagined so much would transpire over just a couple of months. At the beginning of the year I thought this would just be another year like the last couple during the war, tough. I heard from some of the wives on the street that their husbands, along with many other US soldiers went to invade the Philippines. Everyone was so tense and scared. Mary Sue next door lost her husband two days after, oh Mother it was awful. I could not even imagine losing my husband. This started to become the norm around town. I can’t tell you the amount of funerals I have attended lately.

However, not everything has been so bad! President Roosevelt was elected president again! And the war started to take a turn for the better. We were hearing less and less about people being killed and more about the successes over seas. I heard from the news that General Eisenhower declares German defenses on the Western front! Everyone’s attitudes started to change around town. Everyone wasn’t so tense all the time. We could all tell the end of the war was coming things weren’t so tight anymore like the last couple of years.

April 12th was one of the last days that put a dark cloud over the country. President Roosevelt died. No one even knew how to react. We had almost gotten used to hearing about people coming home from war dead but the president was something different. There was a gloomy feeling around the town and, I suspect, around the country.

Nevertheless, things started to change and by the time august came around Japan had finally surrendered and the war is over. Finally, everyone can come home. Mother, everything is turning back to normal. Even though I was not on the war front I feel like the war has touched even myself a million miles away.

Much love, Your daughter

__Pedagogical Implications:__

For middle school students I would use this assignment at the end of a unit. To start the unit I would slowly introduce them to the important events in chronological order. When doing this I would make sure to put more emphasis on the events that I thought my students should focus on. At the end of the unit I would give my students options of what type of letter they would want to write. However, I would have a requirement that they are in a perspective of someone during that time period.

Students would have the option of writing a letter in the perspective of a soldier, citizen, or the President of the United States. There would be guidelines about how many important facts I would want them to include and what other information I would want them to include in there letter. This assignment would be a great project to have the student do in the middle of the unit. By having them do this assignment at the end of the unit I, as the teacher, will be able to tell if they understood the string of events that we have talked about. In addition I would be able to determine if we can move forward to another unit or if we need to go over some events in more details. This type of assignment would be a good creative assignment that students could use their imagination while also applying what they have learned over the unit.