Flashback and Foreshadowing: Flashback Should be Taught Before Foreshadowing When Teaching Reading

Flashback and foreshadowing are often taught together. Flashback is often taught as a story device grouped with foreshadowing. While they are important aspects of teaching reading, I would argue that for the upper elementary and middle school aged students, flashback is the one in which you need to focus the majority of your teaching efforts. Flashback should be taught before foreshadowing when teaching reading.

It is so important that an effective reading teacher should use 90-95% of their reading time helping students identify flashback in reading and maybe 5% could go toward foreshadowing. Read on to find out why there is such a significant split between flashback and foreshadowing.

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Teaching Flashback and Foreshadowing

What is Flashback?

Teaching the definition and purpose of flashback is simple enough.

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Flashback is used to give the reader important information about the past. Flashbacks help fill in missing information and make current information make more sense.

The majority of a reading teacher’s time should be use guiding and helping students identify when the author is signaling that they are indeed reading a flashback.

If a student is not monitoring their comprehension as they read a story that is filled with flashback, the student could easily become confused and mixed up by the story.

Authors will often signal with one word or a short phrase that the character is reliving a memory instead of currently experiencing the event in live time.

Oregon State University “What is a Flashback?”

What is the Point of a Flashback?

Storytellers will share important information through flashback to help us as the reader/viewer understand a character’s actions. Flashback can also help develop the plot of the story.

Flashback is often used to highlight and understand

A character’s past traumatic event,
A backstory that conveys some pertinent background information
Some relevant intrusive thoughts that distract the character from the present moment.

Flashback will help us understand why someone who acts like a grumpy old man has become a grumpy old man (Carl, the old man, from Up)

What Flashback Signals Should Be Taught?

The easiest way to teach students to identify flashback is to discuss times they have seen flashback in movies and television. Usually the creators of movies and TV will identify a flashback with lighting- black and white picture, fuzzy haze etc.

Here are some short movie clips to use to discuss and breakdown what signals are used to identify the flashback.

Encanto Mirabel’s Flashback

Ratatouille Flashback

Coco Flashback

Despicable Me 3 Minion Flashback (does have a minion butt in the background)

Carl’s Flashback in Up (AKA One of the Greatest Love Stories of All Time)

After the students have an idea of the general time shift jumps that happen during a flashback, it helps to identify examples of flashback to highlight. I will often call out flashbacks as I do my read aloud, which helps build an awareness for my students.

The author can signal to the reader that there has been a change in time and/or place using italics or transitional words and phrases.

As the blog Writer’s Edit explains-

The best flashbacks are set up by the previous paragraph. In the lead up to the flashback, there is generally a ‘trigger’ – something that causes the protagonist/narrator to recall a particular event or detail of the past. The trigger is explored/explained in the flashback itself which then also reveals new information to the reader.

Flashback Signals to Teach

Here are some phrases to be on the lookout to highlight a flashback:

She remembered when . . .

I thought about the time . . .

My dad used to . . .

There once was . . .

The use of italics is always an interesting thing for a reader to consider. Point out whenever you notice italics being intentionally used in text. It might not necessarily indicate flashback, but it should indicate that the author is trying to emphasize something.

Why is Flashback More Important than Foreshadowing?

When a reader can identify flashback independently, foreshadowing and flashback have the same effect in a given story. They help enhance the understanding of a story.

The reason that I am so passionate about practicing flashback first is that not knowing when the author is jumping into a flashback can have an effect on the total understanding of the story. It messes with the student’s comprehension. If a reader doesn’t know when or where the character is, they aren’t going to understand what is going on in the story.

Students who don’t monitor their comprehension and attend to those subtle flashback cues will easily think that the character has changed location in the story, not that they are thinking the flashback thought in their head.

For example, if a character is at a football game think on the last football game they played and how they ended up at the hospital with a broken leg, students who do not monitor their comprehension or attend to the cueing signals that what they are reading is a flashback will think that there was an accident and the character is at the hospital in real time.

If a student misses foreshadowing, they might not enjoy the story as fully, but they will have an overall structural understanding of the story.

Be on the lookout for students who struggle with executive functioning. They are the students in particular who might not be monitoring the meaning of the story to pay attention to the subtle signals of a flashback.