The Beauty of One-pagers & RETRIEVAL PRACTICE

Thanks to Betsy Potash, the author of the marvellous space nowsparkcreativity.com, I have discovered and come to love one pagers- the response one pager, for example TedTalk one pagers like these:

or hexagonal thinking templates, such as this one:

Both types are a wonderful way to afford student autonomy and creativity at the same time providing a framework to harness and channel those time and content-wise. They are much loved, universal yet personal tools that can be used to process and produce language and content for numerous activities- listening and reading comprehension, class presentations and vocabulary work. (If you want to find out more, check out my presentation on one-pagers that I delivered during the recent IATEFL Poland conference- here)

Still, it is retrieval practice one-pagers that I find most useful these days. You may ask what these are- they are simple grids or tables where students put eg. vocabulary they manage to recall from last lesson, last week further back (see a sample vocab grid I created here). Such one-pagers are effective low- or no-stakes activities that promote true learning, and when done together with spacing, interleaving and feedback-driven metacognition that are the foundations of powerful teaching and learning, they are key to our students succeeding- retrieval practice will definitely be the topic of my next blog entry- stay tuned!

Meanwhile, have a look at this wakelet collection and view the recording on my webinar on one-pagers here:)

Just a side note, hope you don’t mind......

If you like my content, maybe you would like to support me and buy me coffee?

Also, you might want to check other materials I create for the English Bilingual Secondary Classes (C1) - I am sure some of them will be useful for the English B HL classes, for example BritSpeak or OpenBookCouples.

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SPEECH STATIONS

I have been looking for a way to spice up a bit the class I give in DP1 as introduction to speeches- both oral and written (paper 1). Then it dawned on me- why not get the students move and learn about the structure, language, rhetorical appeals rotating the stations in pairs? I tried and it worked very well- have a look at the stations and the sample answers:) . The class is designed for 5 stations, but there is also an optional one on extra linguistic features- I’ve put them in my google disc as pdfs, but you can also create QR codes for them so that you don’t need to print the activities. As for the class itself, you can ask students to compete against each other in their pairs, and check their worksheets yourself, or allow them accces to the sample key to encourage self-assessment or peer-assessment. What needs to be done at the end is a wrap-up session on the text type that speech is- one idea might be ask students to elaborate on the titles of each s...

HONY, honey:)

There is a book, fb page, lots of articles, videos, interviews, lesson ideas on HONY- Humans of New York, and now there is also my extensive lesson plan-... Never heard of it? Humans of New York (HONY) is a popular photography project and storytelling blog created in 2010 by Brandon Stanton. It started as a simple goal to photograph 10,000 people living in New York City, but evolved into a powerful collection of portraits and personal stories. Each photo is paired with a short interview or quote that reveals intimate, honest, and often surprising details about the subject's life. Over time, the project expanded beyond New York to include stories from many countries, covering diverse experiences and social issues. HONY offers a unique window into the lives of everyday people, encouraging empathy and understanding through storytelling. Interested? Check out this handout for reading, listening, writing and speaking ideas. Just a side note, ...

Have yourself a "less-is-more" Christmas....

Every year, the same film plays on repeat. Black Friday hits, and people who swore they were “cutting back this year” are suddenly refreshing carts at midnight, chasing countdown timers and “only 3 left!” banners. This was the starting point for my minimalism lesson: if students are already swimming in Black Friday ads and Christmas wish lists, why not turn that chaos into something reflective and language‑rich? The heart of the plan is a “Less Is More” advent calendar that runs parallel to the shopping season. While the outside world shouts “Buy! Hurry! More!”, students open a different kind of window each day: deleting unused apps, clearing one surface, designing an experience gift instead of buying another object. Each task comes with a guided question and a pair of chunky expressions to use in a short English reflection, so language development and behaviour change grow together. In this handout Black Friday and Christmas haven’t disappeared, but the spell is weake...

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