One-Pagers for the Art-Phobic

Please note that the content of this page was taken from the Spark Creativity blog written by Betsy Potash. Any first person pronouns refer to the author.

What is a One-Pager?

One-pagers are becoming increasingly popular as a way to help students process what they have read in one powerful activity. Like sketchnotes, they combine visuals with text to make ideas come alive in students’ minds and memories.

One-pagers have got it all. They help students think critically and creatively. They give teachers a quick assessment option, and give students a colorful, memorable result. What’s more, there are just so many ways you can use one-pagers to help your students connect to your class materials.

As wonderful as they are, it’s easy for students to struggle with one-pagers if they are not naturally inclined toward art and have not previously been encouraged to represent their ideas this way. They may feel they are being graded unfairly on their artistic abilities.

Some students will hear directions to create a graphic representation of a reading and dive right in. Others will moan and mutter things about “ridiculous art projects.” But the popularity of one pagers with teachers lately is undeniable. If students can get over their hang-ups, they really learn a lot from processing what they’ve read in visual form with a one-pager.

So how to help the art-haters thrive alongside the artists? How to show everyone that their one-pagers are about critical thinking and interpretation, not just flair pens (though flair pens are a pretty fabulous addition)?

When you provide students with a clear and straightforward template with instructions for what to put inside each section, you give them some creative constraint that can actually help inspire them to do their best.

For example, you can divide up the paper and provide instructions to include aspects like these:

A border which somehow represents the key themes from what you have read
An image in the upper left hand corner with a quotation woven into or around it. This image should somehow represent what you consider to be the most important symbol in the text so far.
Images and/or doodled words in the upper right hand corner that represent the key characters from the text and perhaps how they are changing
Images and quotations in the lower left hand corner that show the author’s style of writing, and the power of the language that is used
Images and/or words in the bottom right hand corner that show connections between the themes and ideas in the writing and what is going on in the world today.
Three important quotations from the text
Words and/or images that show the significance of the setting in some way

This way, students have a clear to-do list, and avoid the writer’s/artist’s block that can get in the way. You can experiment with varied templates, and even start letting students who want to go off template once they get comfortable with the structure. 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.

The rest of this page 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.

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.

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.

One-Pagers for Vocab 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.

One-Pagers for Name Tents

Trying to memorize your students names in week one can be so frustrating! You’re just a tad busy (ha ha), but the last thing you want to do is offend one of your students.

With this name tent one pager, students are guided through creating a name tent on card stock that will help the whole class learn their names and get to know them better too.

Bonus, the name tents work great for the rest of the year when you want to change up your seating chart (just throw out the name cards onto desks however you want them before students arrive), assign groups, or give a helping hand to a substitute teacher. You can find my template here or make your own.

One-Pagers for Reading Profiles

It’s a lot easier to effectively match students with great books once you know their reading background.

Letting them create reading profile one pagers as you roll out your independent reading program is an easy way to discover their favorite titles, authors, and genres before you begin steering them into your bookshelves. Find my version of this activity here.

One-Pagers for Novels

When you need a novel-specific assessment, you can create instructions for a template that hits on what you want students to take away, as I did for this one-pager assignment for The Outsiders.

If you’d like a set of free template options ready made so you only have to create the instructions, you can find that right here.

Sample One-Pager Templates, Student Instructions, and Grading Rubrics

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