• Quick retrieval from earlier learning (Foreshadowing, flashback, cliffhanger and red herring; The effect of narrative perspective and tense). Students answer on mini whiteboards.
• Show answers together and note who needs support in the main task.

1. Which narrative technique matches this description? An ending to a chapter or episode that leaves the reader in suspense. (red herring / flashback / cliffhanger / foreshadowing) → cliffhangerPrompt: Does the technique look forward, look back, stop at a tense moment, or mislead?
2. Is the proposed answer correct? An older narrator looks back on her childhood in the past tense. What does this allow? → reflection: she can comment on what she understands now that she didn't then (yes, it is correct / no, it is not correct) → yes, it is correctPrompt: Who is telling the story, and when (present or looking back)?
3. Which narrative technique is used here? The smell of the sea took her back twenty years, to a summer when she and her brother built a raft from driftwood. (flashback / red herring / cliffhanger / foreshadowing) → flashbackPrompt: Does the moment hint at the future, return to the past, end on a question, or point to the wrong suspect?

• Read the first lines of a short text aloud and ask what students predict will happen and why.
• Share the objective: Narrative techniques: unreliable narrator, in medias res, frame narrative…. Read the success criteria together.

• Work through the example out loud, saying why you do each step, not just what you do.
• Example: Which narrative technique matches this description? A story told through letters, diary entries, emails or other documents.
• Step 1: Narrative techniques shape how and when readers learn the story, and how far they trust the teller.
• Step 2: epistolary: A story told through letters, diary entries, emails or other documents.
• Step 3: So the answer is: epistolary
• Answer: epistolary
• Pause after each step and ask a student to say what comes next.

• Do these together. Students try each step on whiteboards before you reveal it.
• Use the hints as prompts rather than giving the answer.

1. Which narrative technique matches this description? A story told within another story. (stream of consciousness / epistolary / frame narrative / unreliable narrator) → frame narrativePrompt: Think about who tells the story, in what form, and where the story starts.
2. Which narrative technique is used here? Snowed in at a mountain inn, a group of travellers take turns telling stories; most of the book is made up of these tales. (multiple narrators / in medias res / frame narrative / stream of consciousness) → frame narrativePrompt: Is the form unusual (letters, thoughts), does the story start mid-action, sit inside another story, or have a narrator we can't trust?

• Students work on the student sheet. Circulate and check the first two answers of every student early.
• Students who finish: write a question of their own for a partner, with the answer.

The 6 questions are on the student sheet below, with answers in the key.

• Two questions on their own. Sort answers into got it / nearly / not yet to plan the next lesson.

1. Type the narrative technique (in English) that matches this description. Starting a story in the middle of the action, explaining the background later. → in medias resPrompt: Think about who tells the story, in what form, and where the story starts.
2. Which narrative technique is used here? Each chapter is narrated by a different member of the family, so we see the same argument from four sides. (epistolary / frame narrative / stream of consciousness / multiple narrators) → multiple narratorsPrompt: Is the form unusual (letters, thoughts), does the story start mid-action, sit inside another story, or have a narrator we can't trust?

Free online practice with hints and printable worksheets for this skill: eurekami.com/english/grade-11.