The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast | ELA
Education:How To
This week I want to talk about how one-pagers can be a powerful gateway to creative options in your classroom.
Let’s start with the one-pager basics. A one-pager allows students to express their takeaways from, well, just about anything, on a single paper through a combination of words and images. A one-pager can includes quotations, analysis, key terms, imagery, special fonts, symbolic colors, and more. You probably already know that my #1 tip for one-pagers is to give students a template that connects the elements that you want with a location on a template, so kids don’t feel overwhelmed as they begin to experiment.
You can try your first one-pager with a novel, a Ted talk, a poem, a short story, a play, a song, a podcast... You get the idea!
One of the great things about one-pagers is that they open the door to this form of dual expression, where kids are communicating their ideas through both words and visuals. Take a second to talk to them about how prevalent this is in the world. Ask them to consider political campaigns, social media, Youtube, online news. Get them started thinking about how often they see only words or only pictures, and how often it’s actually a combination that expresses ideas most effectively and memorably.
As students realize that their simple first step of a one-pager is actually guiding them into a new genre of expression, one that parallels many forms of real world communication, they may open up to more type of creative projects in class. You may find them more excited about research carousels, infographics, book trailers, and more real-world projects that bring visuals onto the scene to complement their writing. You may find that fewer students scoff that art is a waste of their time.
If you haven’t tried a one-pager yet, this week I want to highly recommend that you dive in! I’ll link my free templates for any novel in the show notes. And if you have, give a little thought to how you can use them as a gateway in students’ minds. It’s a powerful shift in how we see the world, and one that can benefit your creative classroom.
Free One-Pager Templates Here
Black Friday Menu for Next Week Starting Monday (Each Button Goes Live on its Day of the Week)
Go Further:
Explore alllll the Episodes of The Spark Creativity Teacher Podcast.
Join our community, Creative High School English, on Facebook.
Come hang out on Instagram.
Enjoying the podcast? Please consider sharing it with a friend, snagging a screenshot to share on the ‘gram, or tapping those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ to help others discover the show. Thank you!
170: How to Host a Graphic Novel Book Tasting
169: Turning Classics into Graphic Novels, with Gareth Hinds
168: Why I'm not Worried about the New AI Tools
167: Fight Erasure. Feature Contemporary Indigenous Voices in Class.
166: How to Add an Audiobook Listening Station to your ELA Classroom
165: Classroom Management Strategies you can Actually Enjoy
164: 5 Public Speaking Projects for Secondary ELA
163: Case Study: A Meaningful 21st Century Research Project
162: Active Teaching: 10 Out-of-their-Seats Activities
161: The Ultimate Guide to First Chapter Friday
160: The College Essay: What Students (and Teachers) Need to Know
159: 3 Creative Ways to Teach Varied Sentence Structure
158: How to Create a Successful International Classroom Partnership
157: Designing Back-to-School for Belonging, with Dr. Susie Wise
156: How to Teach Living Poets, with Mel Smith
155: 21 Creative ELA Lessons you can use Immediately
154: Colorful Vocabulary Activities: Story Tiles, Wordy Decor & More
153: 6 Powerful Mentor Texts for Secondary ELA
152: 5 Class Podcast Projects for ELA
151: Here's the Teacher Tech that Actually Helps, with Jennifer Gonzalez
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Navigating Life After 40
LifeBlood
Science of Reading: The Podcast
The Minimal Mom
Old Fashioned On Purpose