Understanding and Evaluating Foreshadowing
Lesson Title: Understanding and Evaluating Foreshadowing
Estimated Time: 25 - 30 minutes
Learner Audience / Primary Users
College & Career Readiness Standards (CCRS) Alignment
Instructional Strategies and Activities
Presentation / Modeling / Demonstration
Part 3: Supplementary Resources & References
Part 1: Lesson Description
Lesson Title
Identifying and Evaluating Foreshadowing
Abstract
This module is intended for adult learners with some previous high school education who are pursuing the completion of their GED. This lesson focuses on identifying and evaluating foreshadowing, targeting the Common Core Readiness Standards for ELA/Literacy 2. Adult learners will read, analyze, and evaluate foreshadowing in multiple examples.This module involves reading, viewing, and writing components.
Learner Audience / Primary Users
Adult Learners pursuing the GED.
Educational Use
- Curriculum / Instruction
College & Career Readiness Standards (CCRS) Alignment
- Level: Adult Education
- Grade Level: E (9-12th grade)
- Subject: CCRS English Language Arts / Literacy
- Domain or Strand: CCRS.ELA/Literacy 2
- RL.9-10.2: Reading - Literature
- Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze in detail its development over the course of the text including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text.
Language
English
Material Type
- Instructional Material
- Activities
- Images
- Module
Learning Goals
The purpose of this lesson is for learners to be able to:
- Identify what foreshadowing in literature is
- Analyze the use of foreshadowing to the larger theme or central ideas
- Evaluate the effectiveness of foreshadowing (eg. does it establish suspense? humor?)
- Apply knowledge of foreshadowing to everyday occurrences and events
Keywords
- Designers for Learning
- Adult Education
- Foreshadowing
- Reading
- Literature
- English
Time Required for Lesson
25 - 30 minutes
Prior Knowledge
8th grade reading level.
Required Resources
- Computer/PC
- Internet connection
Lesson Author & License
- Lesson Author: Christina R. Bouwens
- License: Creative Commons License; Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license
Part 2: Lesson
Learning Objectives
By the end of this lesson, the learner should be able to :
- Understand the literary device of foreshadowing
- Identify foreshadowing in a literary text
- Explain how foreshadowing connects to a text’s main ideas or conclusion
- Synthesize to real world examples
Lesson Topics
Key topics covered in this lesson include:
- Foreshadowing
- Reading for meaning
- Evaluating mood
- Writing
Context Summary
This lesson aims to support adult learners pursuing their GED via online/eLearning, particularly in the English Language Arts/Literacy standards realm. The module is written for a 9th-12th grade reading level, and incorporates different types of “text” for identifying, analyzing and evaluating foreshadowing, from image to a short film to poetry examples. The goal here is to support adult learners in understanding and communicating through writing how central ideas or themes within any given text can be supported by foreshadowing in the work, as well as to extend these ideas to the larger “real” world and pay attention to where foreshadowing may be at work in their own lives while targeting the Common Core Readiness Standards.
Relevance to Practice
Identifying foreshadowing in any text is a powerful move toward understanding as well as analyzing the overall main ideas, themes, or plot development -- skills students pursuing the completion of their adult education must master. In bringing in varied “texts” (image, short film, poetry), I aim to reinforce the idea that foreshadowing is everywhere, from billboards to movies, novels to weather reports, poetry to conversations with friends and family. Learners will be able to identify the impact foreshadowing has on the work overall in evaluating the mood it supports, and do so through succinct, effective writing in an eLearning format.
Key Terms and Concepts
- Foreshadowing
- Mood
- Central idea
- Writing
- Evidence
Instructional Strategies and Activities
Warm-Up
Time: 5 minutes
(Activation & Demonstration Phase)
Student invitation/assignment (eLearning module):
- “Respond to the following prompt ~ How do you best predict how your day, week, or year will go? Similarly, how might you best predict how a story will end, or what someone will do in any given situation? Respond in as much detail with examples as you feel appropriate to express your ideas clearly and fully.”
- Once you have responded to the prompt, read at least one other student’s response and write a brief reply then reply. Your reply is to engage your peer, asking a clarifying question or connecting in some meaningful way to what he or she has written.
Introduction
Time: 5 minutes
(Demonstration Phase)
Students will be prompted to read a slide defining foreshadowing in literature. This slide will read something as follows…
Foreshadowing: a literary device where the writer provides a hint of what’s to come
(a clue to an event that will later occur). Foreshadowing helps establish the
mood of a text (in other words, it may increase tension, create suspense, provide humor, etc.)
Presentation / Modeling / Demonstration
Time: 5 minutes
(Demonstration Phase)
Here, students navigate to a slide with an image (Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader), inviting their “reading” of this text for foreshadowing and its impact on the work as a whole. Students will be assigned to write a brief response, identifying each of the following:
- What might be the foreshadowing in this image? If you’re unfamiliar with this image and/or aren’t sure what might be happening, write an educated guess based on what you see here.
- What impact does this have on the overall work (in other words, does it establish a mood or feeling or fear? humor? suspense? something else?)? Explain. Again, an educated guess please!
Guided Practice
Time: 10 minutes
(Application Phase)
- Students will then be invited to view the Disney/Pixar Short Film “Hawaiian Vacation,” providing a hypothesis (educated guess) as to what might be the foreshadowing example, pressing students to think critically about what is foreshadowed in this short film, to write about it as well as what “mood” or feeling it helps establish (suspense? humor? dread?).
- An additional slide students will navigate to once they have written a response will clarify the foreshadowing element, and detail the feeling or mood it helps establish. This allows students to reflect upon their viewing, thinking, and writing and to respond if they so wish to this slide and/or another student’s comment(s).
Evaluation
Time: 5 minutes
(Application & Integration Phase)
Writing Prompt (response required):
Thinking back to our brainstorming warm-up activity, what in your “real world” might constitute some form of foreshadowing. For example, do you think weather reporting might involve foreshadowing? Why/how? How about fortune-tellers/psychics/tarot cards or the like? Why/how? How might foreshadowing play a part in listening to a friend or family member recount a story or event from his/her life, or your own storytelling? Any other examples? How might understanding how foreshadowing operates serve a role in your “real life”?
Application (Integration Phase)
Time: 5 minutes
Finally, students will demonstrate understanding and application of foreshadowing in a summative assessment with their choice of two contemporary poems (provided via hyperlinks):
- Poem 1: “Dream in Which I Love a Third Baseman” (Lisa Olstein, 2006)
- Poem 2: “The End and the Beginning” (Wislawa Szymborska, translation)
A slide will provide these directions with a “Reply” prompt for students’ analytic responses:
- Read one or both of the following poems. Choose one of these poems to analyze its use of foreshadowing. Describe with evidence from the poem where the foreshadowing is (you may refer to a specific line or paraphrase -- write in your own words -- the content); then, analyze what is foreshadowed by the end of the poem. Finally, evaluate the use of foreshadowing: does it intensify humor? suspense? dread? something else?
Part 3: Supplementary Resources & References
Supplementary Resources
2016. Dream in Which I Love a Third Baseman. Poetry Foundation. Retrieved from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/51008
2016. The End and the Beginning. Poetry Foundation. Retrieved from http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/52955
Date Unknown. Foreshadowing. TV Tropes. Retrieved fromhttp://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Foreshadowing
Date Unknown. Hawaiian Vacation - Toy Story Toons. Disney Video. Retrieved from http://video.disney.com.au/hawaiian-vacation-toy-story-toons
References
2016. Dream in Which I Love a Third Baseman. Poetry Foundation. Retrieved from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/51008
2016. The End and the Beginning. Poetry Foundation. Retrieved from http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/52955
Date Unknown. Foreshadowing. TV Tropes. Retrieved fromhttp://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Foreshadowing
Date Unknown. Hawaiian Vacation - Toy Story Toons. Disney Video. Retrieved from http://video.disney.com.au/hawaiian-vacation-toy-story-toons
Attribution Statements
Original content: material created specifically for the slide deck or material created previously that has never been published (eg. an instructor’s lecture notes).
This course content is offered by Designers for Learning under a CC Attribution license.
Content in this course can be considered under this license unless otherwise noted. Page
(Design Guide effective March 29, 2016)