Michael Morpurgo Month 2020: Private Peaceful Cover Sheet

Private Peaceful This is one of sixteen resources that you can use with your class to celebrate Michael Morpurgo Month in February, or to explore books from the world famous author at any other time of the year.

Each resource is built around an extract but also shares some of the key themes from the complete story that make the book such a rich and enjoyable text to share with your class. The extracts can be read with the class using the accompanying PowerPoints, and there are teacher notes and pupil challenges to help children develop their own story-writing skills.

This lesson experiments with personification and the present tense.

Private Peaceful “They’ve gone now, and I’m alone at last. I have the whole night ahead of me, and I won’t waste a single moment of it… I want tonight to be long, as long as my life…”

From the battlefields of the First World War, Thomas Peaceful relives memories of his childhood and family life in the countryside.

A poignant story of the First World War from master storyteller Michael Morpurgo, Private Peaceful captures the memories of a young First World War soldier awaiting the firing squad at dawn. From his early childhood adventures in rural Devon, to the battles and injustices of war that brought him to the front line, Private Tommo Peaceful spends these lonely hours reliving his short but vivid past.

Themes and ideas Private Peaceful is a beautifully written novel, which contrasts bittersweet childhood memories with the horrors of war. Told in the first person, it alternates between past and present, creating both humour and heartache and building tension towards its dramatic conclusion. The book raises many ideas and themes to be explored with a class of children:

The reality of war Literature, including some war poetry, can portray fighting and dying in a war as a glorious or honourable action. This is not the case in Private Peaceful, where the realities of life in the trenches in the First World War are presented starkly. Michael Morpurgo has written: “We should honour those who died, most certainly, and gratefully too, but we should never glorify. We should heed the words of those who were there, who did the fighting, and some of them the dying.”

(Guardian, 1 Jan, 2014).

Key discussion questions: • What have you learned about the experience of soldiers fighting in the First World War from Private Peaceful?

• Why do you think Michael Morpurgo chose to tell Tommo and the other soldiers’ stories?

Courage and bravery It takes great bravery to enlist in the army and fight in a war, to face the enemy.

But being courageous can also mean standing up for what you believe in, even if you know that the consequences might be terrible, like Charlie in Private Peaceful.

Key discussion questions: • What does it mean to be brave?

• Which characters exhibit true bravery in the story? Are they rewarded for their bravery?

Of course, other themes and ideas might emerge from reading and discussing the book: friendship and camaraderie, loss and grief, religion and belief, as well as the chance to explore an important time in history.

Using the resource This resource shares an extract from the story, describing a gas attack in the trenches. After reading the text, there is a set of short teaching activities considering the use of personification to create an image, with a specific focus on writing in the present tense to create a sense of immediacy.

There is also a sheet with a storytelling challenge based on the extract. For Private Peaceful it focuses on sharing an exciting moment in a story, using the first person and personification as techniques to develop their storyteller’s voice. This could be used as a short classroom activity or as homework to consolidate the learning from the teaching session.

Teacher’s notes for the PowerPoint Slide 2 Share the front cover and blurb to introduce the book.

what this section of text is describing (the gas spreading through the trench and heading towards Tommo).

If you are reading the whole novel as a class, the activities in this resource begin on p. 153 so read up until this point first.

Ask the children to read through the extract again in pairs, discussing how Michael Morpurgo describes the movement of the poisonous gas. You might prompt them by asking:

If you are using the resources as an introduction to the text, tell children that you are going to look at an extract that describes the moment Tommo Peaceful, a private in the British Army in the First World War, describes a gas attack on his trench.

Slide 3 Read aloud together (either with the teacher reading aloud and children following, children reading together as a class or children reading together in pairs) and then ask children what is happening in the scene.

Check children understand the meaning of any unfamiliar words (“bayonets” and “fixing them”; “feverishly” and “frantically”).

Ask the children to read through the extract again in pairs, discussing how the soldiers feel now the gas has been thrown into the trench. Ask the children: have the soldiers prepared for this happening? How is this time, when it is for real, different from their training?

Ask the children to identify the tense the extract is written in (present tense). If children are unsure, model changing part to the past tense so they can see the difference (“The cry went up and was…”).

Discuss why Michael Morpurgo might have chosen to tell this scene in the present tense (captures the sense of excitement and action – something is happening now; puts the reader right at the heart of the scene; the reader can emphasise with the characters as it feels like it is happening right now).

Slide 4 Introduce this extract as the next part of the scene. Again, read aloud together (either with the teacher reading aloud and children following, children reading together as a class or children reading together in pairs) and then ask children

•

Does he compare the gas to anything?

•

What do you imagine the gas doing in the scene?

Tell the children that personification is the term used when feeling or human qualities are given to things that are not alive. Can they spot personification being used here? Prompt the children by asking: •

Is the gas “searching ahead” for Tommo? Is it really “scenting” him?

Discuss why Michael Morpurgo might have described the gas in this way (perhaps it shows how Tommo views the gas, as a predator hunting him down to hurt him; perhaps it compares the gas to a predator like a snake, seeking out people to kill them).

Slide 5 Tell the children that they are going to practise using the techniques from Private Peaceful in their own storytelling.

Ask the children to think of a moment in a story which is exciting. It might be a new story that they have invented or a retelling of a moment in a story they know well.

In pairs, children can tell the exciting moment to each other, trying to speak in the present tense, use personification, or both. They can then try writing their scenes and sharing these with other people in the class.

After they have written their scenes, ask the children to reflect on their use of the techniques: how do their choices affect how the scenes sound when read aloud? Do they help them to sound exciting and capture the attention of their reader? Have they managed to keep the tense consistent?