Recently, I found a new love… a new teaching strategy that became a game changer for me and my students. The One Pager. Have you heard of these? One pager activities allow students to show what they know about a specific topic all on one singular page. The key element that separates these one pagers from any other assignment, is the combination of their written reflections/understandings and art. Students creatively display their knowledge with text, drawings, color, and any other elements that showcase their knowledge.
Here are some examples of one pager assignments from my classroom:
I love how these display a combination of their artistic talent, symbols from the texts, and their written interpretations and understandings. They are still completing a rhetorical analysis or a literary analysis, but they also get to showcase their creativity. Engagement soars! My students have not gotten excited for their rhetorical analysis assessments. And… that excites me!
That said, with all this love for one pager activities, I will share the two pitfalls that I, myself, fell into when I started using one pagers.
Pitfall Number One: The Vague Student Directions Page.
When I started using one pagers, I asked students to incorporate their thoughts and visuals on the page. I provided a basic checklist for students – a ‘what you must include list,’ and then I sat back and waited for these amazing one pager activities to appear before me. I thought they would be Instagram and Pinterest worthy. I thought that students would be excited, pencils and colored markers scribbling furiously across the page as they worked zealously to express their understandings. Instead, students sat. Many were paralyzed by the openness of the task. “Where do I start?” “How do you want this arranged?” “What pictures should I draw?” “Do you just want a paragraph on one side and a picture on the other?” “How will I be graded?” “What if I can’t draw?” I was bombarded with questions, their eyes full of panic. Then, it hit me. Better directions. The first question that really needed to be answered was this: “what is a one-pager?” How can my students complete this task, if they don’t even know what that task is? My one pager student directions sheets now include a section to answer just that question. The other huge hurdle for students is the ‘what to include and where to put it hurdle.’
This leads me to my second pitfall.
Pitfall Number Two: Lack of Scaffolding
A lot of one pagers are simply that- a blank one page for students to share their thoughts and ideas. This does work well for some students. Reflecting back on my rhetorical analysis one pager example above, this student did not use the layout that I suggested to students. She took her own idea and ran with it, and it worked beautifully. I always leave the blank one page option for students for that reason.
However, we know that some students will look at that blank page with anxiety and uncertainty. Hence, the scaffolding. I create a segmented one pager like this on for my literary analysis essay. Then, on my student directions page, I show students what they can write and draw in each section. For example, when students are working on their goal setting one pager, each section is a specific question or prompt they can answer as it relates to their goal. For those students, this scaffolded step was so helpful!
Check out a few of my one pager options below to get started with using one pagers in your classroom today.
