• Quick retrieval from earlier learning (Tone and mood; Text structure (cause–effect, compare, problem–solution)). Students answer on mini whiteboards.
• Show answers together and note who needs support in the main task.

1. Sunlight spilled across the meadow, bees hummed lazily among the clover, and somewhere a child was laughing. What is the mood? (gloomy / peaceful and happy / angry / threatening) → peaceful and happyPrompt: What feeling do the word choices create?
2. The corridor stretched into darkness. Somewhere, water dripped. A door, which had been closed a moment ago, now stood half open. What is the mood? (calm and sleepy / tense and eerie / cheerful and bright / funny and silly) → tense and eeriePrompt: What feeling do the word choices create?
3. Oh, wonderful. Another meeting about meetings. I can hardly contain my excitement. What is the speaker's tone? (sarcastic / sincere and excited / sorrowful / frightened) → sarcasticPrompt: What feeling do the word choices create?

• Read the first lines of a short text aloud and ask what students predict will happen and why.
• Share the objective: Foreshadowing, flashback, cliffhanger and red herring. 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? An ending to a chapter or episode that leaves the reader in suspense.
• Step 1: Writers control time and suspense with techniques such as foreshadowing, flashback, cliffhangers and red herrings.
• Step 2: cliffhanger: An ending to a chapter or episode that leaves the reader in suspense.
• Step 3: So the answer is: cliffhanger
• Answer: cliffhanger
• 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 hint or clue early in a story about something that will happen later. (cliffhanger / red herring / flashback / foreshadowing) → foreshadowingPrompt: Does the technique look forward, look back, stop at a tense moment, or mislead?
2. 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 / flashback / red herring / foreshadowing) → flashbackPrompt: Does the moment hint at the future, return to the past, end on a question, or point to the wrong suspect?

• 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? A hint or clue early in a story about something that will happen later. (cliffhanger / foreshadowing / flashback / red herring) → foreshadowingPrompt: Does the technique look forward, look back, stop at a tense moment, or mislead?
2. Which narrative technique is used here? Everyone suspects the gardener, who was seen near the safe with muddy boots, but he was only fixing a leaking pipe. (cliffhanger / red herring / flashback / foreshadowing) → red herringPrompt: Does the moment hint at the future, return to the past, end on a question, or point to the wrong suspect?

Free online practice with hints and printable worksheets for this skill: eurekami.com/english/grade-8.