What is fortune lines?

Draw axes: time along the bottom, fortune/feeling up the side (high = good, low = bad) Read or present the story, event or process Learners plot points showing how the character's fortune changes at each stage Connect the points and discuss the peaks, troughs and turning points

Fortune Lines | Rainbow Curriculum

How it works

A fortune line is a graph that tracks how the experiences or fortunes of a character change over time. The horizontal axis represents time or sequence of events. The vertical axis represents fortune, feeling or well-being, from very low at the bottom to very high at the top.

Learners read or hear a story, study a historical figure's life, or follow a sequence of events. At each significant moment, they plot a point on the graph showing how the character's fortune has changed. Connecting the points creates a line that visually represents the emotional or practical journey.

The skills involved are rich: sequencing events, interpreting information, making inferences about feelings, and justifying placement on the graph. "Why did you put this point so low?" requires learners to explain their reasoning with evidence from the text or source material.

Fortune lines are particularly powerful in humanities subjects. A fortune line for a refugee's journey, a soldier in World War One, or a character in a Welsh myth makes abstract experiences concrete and personal. They also work beautifully with story structure in literacy, making the shape of a narrative visible.

Classroom example

A Year 4 Languages, Literacy and Communication class in a Pembrokeshire school is reading "Goldilocks and the Three Bears." Learners create fortune lines for both Goldilocks and Baby Bear. For Goldilocks, the line starts high (finding a house), stays high (eating porridge, sitting in chairs), drops sharply (the bears return), and ends low (running away scared). For Baby Bear, the line starts high, drops when he finds his things broken, and rises when the intruder leaves. Comparing the two lines sparks discussion about perspective and empathy.

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Curriculum for Wales connection

Fortune lines develop the "Develop" strand of thinking skills through cause-and-effect analysis and inference-making. They build cross-curricular literacy through interpretation and emotional reasoning and support Humanities and Languages, Literacy and Communication particularly well.

Rainbow Curriculum's Thinking Tools lens lets you track where narrative and empathy tools like fortune lines are used across your curriculum, building emotional literacy alongside analytical skills.

Tips

Start with simple stories with clear emotional ups and downs before moving to complex historical narratives.
Ask learners to add key event labels at each plotted point so the fortune line can be read independently.
A common pitfall: all learners producing identical fortune lines. Encourage different interpretations and discuss why people read the same events differently.
Combine with living graphs for a more complex version where statement cards are placed on a pre-drawn graph.
Use sentence level work or story pictures alongside the graph for younger learners.

Related tools

Hot Seating

A role-play activity where one learner takes on a character or expert role and the class asks them questions, developing both questioning skills and deeper understanding.

Living Graphs

An interactive graph where learners place statement cards at the correct position on pre-labelled axes, exploring cause and effect, change over time, and spatial relationships.

Sequencing

An ordering activity where learners arrange a set of statements, events, images, or steps into a logical or chronological sequence, developing understanding of process, cause and effect, and narrative structure.

What Happens Next?

A prediction activity where learners are given a scenario, narrative, or process at a critical point and must predict what will happen next, justifying their prediction with reasoning and evidence.