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Pupils consider: Sergeant Hanley calls Charlie a coward. Tommo calls him the bravest person he knows. Using evidence from the text, pupils argue which account is more justified.
Pupils research the real Shot at Dawn cases — the hundreds of British and Commonwealth soldiers executed during WWI. In 2006, many were officially pardoned. What does this tell us about how attitudes to the war changed?
Ask pupils to explain the effect of Morpurgo's narrative structure: why does the novel not reveal that Charlie is about to be executed until the very end? What effect does this have on the reader?
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