In Honors English 11, as well as in English 12, we'll often use an "exploratory essay" format to think through our analytical observations about a text. These essays, called one pagers (because they should be a page long), are completed after reading and annotating a text. I often refer to them as "semi-formal" writing (you know, there's no need to get your hair professionally done, but you should "clean up" for an audience), where students are allowed to use "I" and write in a more conversational tone than they might for a formal essay. The ideas are what's important, and students are encouraged to explore an aspect of the text that is interesting to them, without being locked into a formal thesis statement. One pagers are sometimes used as pre-writing for a more formal essay. We will always use one pagers as part of our class discussion; I will call randomly on students and ask them to read aloud their ideas to prompt our conversation (they loooooove this). It's a very effective way to make sure our class conversations are student-idea driven.
Here's a one pager for Margaret Atwood's story "Death by Landscape." It was written by a student named Miranda, who noticed something very interesting about the shifts in verb tense in the story, and started to develop a "big idea" about Margaret Atwood's strategy and meaning. It's not perfect (which is to be expected...it's essentially a first draft), but it's full of great ideas, and shows a lot of effort. Enjoy! (If you click on the image, you'll see a bigger version. You can then use your browser settings to zoom in.)
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