Assignment #11: Letters of Remembrance

Hello R8A,

As you know, Remembrance Day is coming up this Thursday. There are many things that we do to remember the people who sacrificed everything to ensure that we live in a free and peaceful country.

The stories that make up history are found through artifacts, journals, letters and passed on oral histories. You will create a historically accurate fictional letter for this task.

This Remembrance Day, I want you to think about the young people in Canada whose lives were affected by war. You will take on the role of one of those people and write an imaginary letter from his or her point of view.

In order to complete this task, you will need to do some research so that your letter will be historically accurate and you can be creative. I have found a wonderful website full of real letters and journal entries from Canadian soldiers who fought in World War I (1914-1918), World War II (1939-1945) and the Korea conflict (1950-1953). You may also choose to write about the Afghanistan conflict (2001-present).

Below are the steps I would like you to follow in completing this task:
-Look at canadianletters.ca to and see what a real letter or journal entry would look like in different time periods
-Get some background knowledge about the events that affected Canadians in these wars/conflicts (wikipedia is a good starting point, but make sure to be a critical researcher)
-decide on a war/conflict that you would like to write about, select a specific event in that war/conflict to focus on (you must include a logically accurate date)
-decide on a point of view you would like to write from (it must be a Canadian participating in an international conflict)
-decide who you are writing to

-in a new post, link back to this assignment
-begin writing your letter, include a greeting and a date
-in your letter include your feelings, your emotions, a description of what you see, hear, smell, feel and taste
-write about how you are thinking about the person you write to and what makes you worried or gives you hope/makes this worthwhile
-paint vivid word pictures (like we did with our Superhero Apartment building in Writer's Workshop) (a tool that might help you to be even more accurate in the language you use is Writer's Dream Tools)
-end your letter appropriately
-remember that it will likely take months for your letter to reach its intended recipient
-ensure that punctuation, grammar and spelling are perfect

-publish your post

-leave a comment here to let me know you're ready to have your letter marked

Some events that you could write about:
-shipping off
-your first participation in a battle
-women heading to work in factories for the first time
-rationing food on the homefront
-WWI - Passchendale
-WWI - Vimy Ridge
-WWII - Dieppe
-WWII - D-Day
-Canada's role in Afghanistan

Here are some possible points of view:
-You may write as a young male soldier in WWI, WWII, or the Korean conflict, or a young male or female soldier in the Afghanistan conflict
-You may write as a mother, sister, friend, girlfriend/boyfriend, wife/husband, or child of someone who is fighting in war, you will be writing from "the homefront"