When editing a page, or creating a new one, to the right under "Page Attributes" is a dropdown called "Template".

The available templates will be different depending on the theme you are using. These templates setup various types of pages for you automatically.

Page Attributes

These templates allow you to set the page to different styles for different applications.

Blog Page creates a page that will display a blog (all posts or posts from a certain category). This is probably the most powerful of all the pages, because this will allow you to setup a page than can display a certain category (for instance, First Grade) and then allow teachers to post to that category......and essentially have a "First Grade" page that shows all the news from First Grade classes. Anything that you put in the "Edit" box will show at the top of the page above the news feed, so make sure you don't get too much content here or visitors will have to scroll too far down to read. There are settings for how many posts show, and settings that turn off/on pagination (newer, older links to scroll through news older than what is on the front page). You can also combine posts from several different categories.
Contact Page sets up a "Contact Us" form that is automatically configured, all you do is put in the email address for the forms to go to.
Full Width Page removes the sidebar from the page, giving you the entire page to work with. This is helpful for content that needs more space than the sidebar allows.
Gallery Page sets up an automatic gallery of photos. Galleries support pagination and jQuery lightbox popup effects for easy viewing.
Other templates - Other templates are available and depend on the theme used.