• 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? A hint or clue early in a story about something that will happen later. (red herring / flashback / foreshadowing / cliffhanger) → foreshadowingPrompt: Does the technique look forward, look back, stop at a tense moment, or mislead?
2. Is the proposed answer correct? A story switches between two first-person narrators in alternating chapters. What is the main benefit? → readers see the same events from two viewpoints (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. (cliffhanger / red herring / foreshadowing / flashback) → 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? Writing that imitates the flow of a character's thoughts, often jumping between ideas. (unreliable narrator / epistolary / multiple narrators / stream of consciousness) → stream of consciousnessPrompt: 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. (frame narrative / unreliable narrator / in medias res / multiple narrators) → 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. Which narrative technique matches this description? Writing that imitates the flow of a character's thoughts, often jumping between ideas. (stream of consciousness / multiple narrators / frame narrative / in medias res) → stream of consciousnessPrompt: 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. (frame narrative / multiple narrators / unreliable narrator / epistolary) → 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.