Read daily with your students, using appropriate fifth-grade books and stories by authors such as Judy Bloom. Decide on stopping points before you begin the lesson and mark them with small sticky notes; stop and ask the students what they think is going to happen next. Have them explain why they think the story is going in that direction, including specific pieces of evidence from the story, such as character motivation and behavior. Write these predictions down and read to the end of the story. Discuss how events later in the story were predicted earlier in the story.
Flashbacks are the opposite of foreshadowing; they reveal events that happened in the past. Use this activity to help link these two literary devices in your students' minds. Pick a story that features a lot of foreshadowing, such as Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" if you think your fifth graders are mature enough to handle the material. Read the story out loud and discuss how it uses foreshadowing. Discuss the changes that would be necessary to the story to make it a flashback. Talk about how this would alter the way the story was told and how it would change their appreciation of the story.
Use this activity toward the end of your discussions on foreshadowing. Have your students write a four to five page story using foreshadowing. Print out a list of foreshadowing elements -- such as character behavior, vague hints and symbols -- that you think your fifth graders can understand. Give them a few days to write the story. Edit the story, give them suggestions on how to improve it and give them a few more days to return the final draft. Pick a few good stories to read out loud illustrating how to effectively use foreshadowing.
Give each student a set of small sticky notes. Assign a book that is appropriate for fifth grade such as the "Harry Potter" series. While they read, have them periodically write down a prediction based on a piece of foreshadowing and stick the note to the book. Check their sticky note predictions every day to see how far they have gone in the book. Read the predictions at the end of the week and write down a list of several of the predictions. Discuss whether the class as a whole thinks these predictions will be accurate.