Michael Morpurgo Month 2020: A Medal for Leroy

A Medal for Leroy 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 activity looks at how Michael Morpurgo plants clues for characters in the story.

A Medal for Leroy Michael doesn’t remember his father, an RAF pilot lost in the war.

And his French mother, heartbroken and passionate, doesn’t like to talk about her husband. But then Auntie Snowdrop gives Michael a medal, followed by a photograph, which begins to reveal a hidden history. This is a story of love and loss and one that will change everything – and reveal to Michael who he really is...

Themes and ideas A Medal for Leroy is a rich and engaging story to share with children of any age. With primary-aged children, it presents the opportunity to talk about some deep ideas that come from reading and thinking about great literature: Racism Michael Morpurgo drew elements of A Medal for Leroy from the true story of Walter Tull, the first black officer to serve in the British Army. During the story, Leroy is subjected to racism and an author’s note at the end of the book details the ways that black soldiers have been overlooked for honours for bravery.

Key discussion questions: • What does the book tell us about how black soldiers were treated during the First World War? • What about afterwards?

• What lessons might people learn today?

Story structure A Medal for Leroy adopts a clever structure, with the tale of Michael’s grandfather, Leroy Hamilton, and his father, Roy, woven into Michael’s own story, who finds the story of his relatives hidden in an old photograph.

Key discussion questions: • Why might Michael Morpurgo have chosen to weave the story of Michael and his family and that of his grandfather together?

• How does meeting Michael as a boy and hearing about his experiences help us to understand Leroy’s story?

Using the resource This teaching resource shares two extracts from the story, one featuring a clue to the whereabouts of a story written for Michael, and another where Michael has found it. After reading the text, there is a set of short teaching activities considering how a storyteller can use ambiguous language to plant clues in a story.

There is also a sheet with a storytelling challenge based on the extract. For A Medal for Leroy it focuses on planting clues for characters in the story. This could be used as a short classroom activity or as homework to consolidate the learning in the teaching session.

After reading and discussing the extract, hopefully some children will be inspired to read the book itself. You could read it aloud as a class novel, or direct children to where they can find a copy to read themselves: the book corner, school library, local library or bookshop.

Illustrations © Michael Foreman, 2012

Teacher’s notes for the PowerPoint Slide 2 Share the front cover and blurb to introduce the book. If you are reading the whole novel as a class, the activities in this resource begin on p. 81 so read up until this point first. If you are using the resources as an introduction to the text, then summarise the story up until this point: Michael grew up in London in the 1940s. He lives with his mother, who is French. His father was killed in the war, and Michael doesn’t know much about him other than that he was very brave.

Michael has two aunts who live together.

When his aunts die, he receives a parcel from his Auntie Snowdrop containing a photo of his father.

Slide 3 Tell the children that this extract is Michael (now thirteen years old) looking at the photograph he has been sent of his father.

Read aloud together (either with the teacher reading aloud and children following, children reading together as a class or children reading together in pairs).

Ask the children how Michael might feel now the picture of his father belongs to him. What might Auntie Snowdrop mean by her words?

Slide 4 Tell the children that Jasper the dog knocks the photograph to the ground and Michael finds a notebook hidden behind the picture. It is his family story told by his aunt.

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 tell the children that the extract comes from the notebook written by his Auntie Snowdrop.

Ask the children whether this changes how you view Auntie Snowdrop’s words in the last extract. If necessary, prompt the children by

Illustrations © Michael Foreman, 2012

asking whether her words could have more than one meaning. Do you think that Michael would work out what she meant?

Slide 5 Ask the children to look at the words in bold and consider how they could be understood in more than one way.

Introduce children to the idea of literal meanings (actually looking behind or through the glass), and metaphorical meanings (looking at the person, rather than their appearance). To crack the clue in this instance, Michael must look for the literal meaning of what his auntie says.

Slide 6 Tell the children that they are going to practise planting a clue for a character to work out in their own storytelling.

Ask pupils to follow the instructions on the slide, thinking of a reason why a clue might be helpful. They can then try and work out a clue to give to their character. For example, for treasure hidden under the mattress they could say, “Perhaps sleeping on the problem will help”. For a key hidden behind a clock, try “Time will tell…”. For a warning that the troll they meet will actually be friendly, they could say, “Remember, looks can be deceiving…”.

In pairs, children can then try telling their story to a partner. Can their partner guess the clue before the character does?