Danny Baza Blas

Here are good examples of essays written by 11th grade honors U.S. History students. The prompt was: after reading letters to the wife of a WWII-era serviceman, determine three personality traits of the writer by analyzing the letters and pulling evidence from his writing . The assignment description and links are  here . Jeff Sediego Mariela Cadena Vanessa Carbajal Maria Bravo Muhammad Fadilah Erick Maheda Lauryn Thompson Jesus Nava Sahara Estrada

Honors U.S. History class (4th period) began a project this week called the World War II Letters Project. Sometime last summer I acquired a box of WW2-era letters written by Levi Kinsel to Rose Kinsel, both San Diegans. The letters were dated 1938-1946. In addition to the letters, the wooden box is filled with pictures and other important documents, including a bible and military discharge papers. Our class goal is to develop a personality profile of Mr. Levi Kinsel, based upon the written evidence in the letters he had written to his wife Mrs. Rose Kinsel, and to setup an online database of the correspondences with images and mood analysis. The letters are sometimes challenging to decipher for a few reasons. One reason is they are written in cursive, and many of the students are unfamiliar with that writing style. In addition to the colloquial words and phrases, these letters are quite fragile and many are written with pencil, which tends to fade over time. We are u...