One Page of WHAT? 8 Creative Ways to use One-Pagers

Have you been wondering, what the heck is a one-pager? Are you ready to discover the OODLES of ways you can use it in your classes?

Yay!

I first heard about one-pagers last year.  Students simply show what they’ve learned on a single piece of paper, using words and images. I was already loving sketch notes and artistic interdisciplinary activities.

Then I googled “one-pagers” and it was love at first sight. I mean really, how awesome are the final products we see posted around social media these days? (Psst, by the way, let’s hang out on Instagram!)

But I was still wondering the same thing I bet you’re wondering: how do you get students there? What about students who hate art? Who think colored pencils are a waste of time? What did the other kids’ projects look like, the ones that didn’t make the internet photos?

That’s when I thought of using templates. I needed some kind of structure to help students succeed with one-pagers, no matter what kind of art skills they had. Specific directions that would help them even if they had never heard of “shading.”

Because in the end, a one-pager is a chance to think deeply about something, and show your depth of thought. That’s all. You don’t have to be Picasso to show, on a piece of paper, that you understood the text.

With the addition of templates, one-pagers become an amaaaaaazing creative classroom strategy.

They’ve got it all. They help students think critically and creatively. They give YOU a quick assessment option, and give students a colorful, memorable result.

What’s more, there are just soooo many ways you can use one-pagers to help your students connect to your class materials.

This post will take you on a tour of options for how to use templated one-pagers. You’ll find links to the templates that I have designed for each type of one-pager assignment, or you can use the ideas to create assignments of your own.

One Pagers for Novels

One-pagers for novels ask students to show the most important parts of what they’ve read. You can ask them to include just about anything, but I like to focus in on character development, themes, author’s style, key quotations, and connections between the text and our modern world.

You can use these as an assessment for literature circles, independent reading, or whole class novels.

Want the templates? Let me send you this free set of four templates with complete directions (AND rubric) when you sign up below to receive my Friday e-mails chock full of creative teaching ideas and inspiration.

One-Pagers for Identity/Autobiography Units

This templated one-pager asks students to represent their life history and personal qualities. It’s a great way to help them reflect on their identities when doing a unit on identity in literature or getting ready to write autobiographies. You can find my handouts here.

One-Pagers for Films

There are so many reasons why watching a video might be useful in class, but it’s nice to have some way to keep students focused as they watch.

Whether you’re building up to video analysis, using it to introduce new themes, or letting students compare it to what they’ve read, using a one-pager template to keep them paying attention helps!

 You can write the prompts for each section of the template specifically to relate to what you want them to take away from it, or you keep them on track with my One-Pager for Any Film Activity.   

One-Pagers for Podcasts

Podcasts are all the rage these days.

There are a lot of great ones to listen to in class, to go with the themes of a unit, to practice analysis, or to jumpstart discussions.

But there’s always the question, what the heck should everyone be doing while they listen? Staring off into space and doodling aren’t great options.

Podcast one-pagers present an easy solution. Students sketchnote their most important takeaways as they listen.  Again, you can create podcast-specific prompts, asking students to capture key quotations, themes and ideas from your episode, or guide students using this general template.

Vocabulary Sketchnotes

Teaching vocabulary isn’t easy.

It’s hard to come up with a lot of fresh and creative ways to help students memorize words.

One of my favorite ways is to have students respond to funny videos with writing prompts that ask them to include vocabulary words. Another of my favorites is to use vocabulary one-pagers.

Especially if you’ve already introduced them to one-pagers with one of the other types of templates, they will have a clear idea of how to combine doodles, images, and words to demonstrate the meaning of their vocabulary. Create your own templates or find mine here.

Name Tent One Pagers