The Resume and the Three-Part Bullet

Standards

Enduring understanding and essential question

Big idea: A resume is not a list of jobs. It is proof, in writing, that you have already done things. You have a year of proof in your FACS folder and most of you do not know it yet.
Essential question: What have I already done that somebody would want to pay me for?

Objectives

By the end of this lesson, students will be able to:

1. (Low) Given a blank resume outline, name the seven sections of a middle school resume and state in one sentence who reads a resume and for how long.
2. (Mid) Given four weak resume bullets, rewrite two of them into the three-part form (the work, the explanation, the output) using specific and true details.
3. (High) Mining their own FACS folder and this year's work, select and justify five pieces of evidence that belong on their resume, and explain for each one why an employer would care.

Vocabulary

Tier 2 (general academic): evidence, specific, section, revise, claim
Tier 3 (FACS): resume, bullet, summary, skill, experience, reference. See Vocabulary 07.md for Turkish, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Materials and setup

• Student FACS folders, pulled from the room's file crate and set on desks before the bell, one per student. These hold the Lesson 1.22, 2.20, 2.21, 2.22, 3.19, 4.16, 5.19, and 6.18 careers self-checks and career research cards, every lab rubric from the year, and the project rubrics.
• Handout 07.01 - Resume Sections and the Three-Part Bullet.md, one per student, printed double sided
• Highlighters, one per student (any color; students mark what they find in the folder)
• Chart paper or a cleared board section headed "This Year We Actually Did" with a marker
• Slides: Slides 07.01 - The Resume and the Three-Part Bullet (outline in 05 Materials; the site renders it as a deck)
• A printed copy of one real, ordinary adult resume with the name and contact information blacked out, one per table of four, for the 45-second timing demonstration. [Sal: use your own resume with your address and phone removed. Students find out that a real one is one page and mostly bullets, and that it belongs to somebody they know.]
• Timer visible to the class
• Setup notes: put the folders out before the bell so students see them and start looking without being told. Write the year's eight projects and labs on the board in advance, in order, as a memory aid: the $40 meal, the budget and ClassroomStreet, the babysitter kit, the room design, the upcycle item, Feed the Class, the safety exam, every lab. Allergy check: none, no food today.

Pre-assessment

The do now asks students to write a resume from memory with no instruction. Collect nothing; read four out loud. What they leave out (the summary line, skills, anything that is not a paid job) is the lesson. Also check the FACS folder count before class: a student with a thin folder needs the board list more than the folder, and a partner who will lend examples.

Do now and hook (Time: 5 min)

On the board: "You are applying for a paid summer job at a place you would actually like to work. You get one sheet of paper to convince them. What goes on it? Make a list. Two minutes."

Debrief: cold call four students and write only the headings they name. Most classes produce "name, phone, jobs I had." Then the hook: hold up the blacked-out adult resume and say, "The person reading this spends about six to eight seconds before deciding whether to read the rest. Not six minutes. Six seconds. So every line has to earn its space." Hand one copy per table. Give them 45 seconds to find, out loud, three things it has that their list did not.

Procedure

Do now 5 plus 7 plus 6 plus 8 plus 10 is 36; the closure below is 4 minutes. Total 40. If the class is slow to settle, cut Step 3 to one bullet.

Questions to ask

Monitor understanding:

• How long does the person reading your resume actually spend on it the first time?
• Which section would a summer camp director read first? Which one would a restaurant read first?
• In this bullet, where is the output? What is missing?
• Is "hard worker" specific? What could you write instead that proves it?

Deepen learning:

• You have never had a paid job. Why does an employer still care what you did in this class?
• Somebody in here cooked for thirty people on a written time plan. Why is that worth more on paper than "I like to cook"?
• Why would a lie on a resume cost you the job even if nobody catches it until after you are hired?
• You take care of a younger sibling every afternoon. Is that experience? Make the case.

Check for understanding

Clipboard checklist during Steps 3 and 4: for each student, yes or no on "the rewritten bullet has all three parts," "the evidence named is something they can point to," and "the why-an-employer-cares sentence names a skill and not a feeling." A student with three yeses is ready to draft tomorrow without a conference. A student with a no on the pointing question gets called first in tomorrow's conference rotation.

Closure (Time: 4 min)

Exit card, three lines: 1 the single strongest thing on your mining sheet, written as a full three-part bullet; 2 one section of the resume you have nothing for yet; 3 one question about tomorrow. Three students read their bullet aloud standing up. Sort the cards into "has a real bullet" and "needs a conference first" before the next period. The second pile is tomorrow's conference order.

Differentiation and supports

• ELL: the seven section names and the six Tier 3 words appear on the handout with the Turkish, Portuguese, and Spanish column from Vocabulary 07.md. The mining sheet gives the sentence frame "I ___ (verb) ___ (what) for ___ (who), and ___ (what came out of it)," printed in all four languages. A student may write the evidence in the home language first and translate the bullet with a partner; the bullet on the final resume is in English because that is what the reader reads. Pair with a bilingual peer where possible.
• IEP and 504 (general): the handout has the bullets pre-typed so nothing has to be copied; a checkbox version of the mining sheet lets a student check the evidence instead of writing a sentence, then say the sentence out loud to the teacher who writes it; extended time to finish the mining sheet during Lesson 7.2; seat near the front for students who need the board list in view; standing or a fidget tool allowed during Steps 1 and 2. A student who cannot write at speed may dictate every bullet; the skill being assessed is the structure, not the handwriting.
• Grade 6 support: mine three pieces of evidence instead of five, and rewrite one bullet instead of two. Grade 6 students have had this course for less of their lives, so let them use the board list rather than the folder if the folder is thin.
• Grade 8 stretch: write one bullet for each of the six FACS modules, so the resume shows range; and draft the one-line summary sentence today instead of tomorrow.
• UDL checkpoints used: multiple means of representation (an anonymized real resume in hand, plus the same structure on a slide and on the handout) and multiple means of action and expression (evidence may be highlighted, checked, written, or dictated).
• No-presentation accommodation: nothing today is presented aloud. A student who does not want to read a bullet at closure hands the card to the teacher and it gets read without the name attached, or not at all.

Assessment

The resume itself is scored summatively on Rubric 07 - Career Readiness and Shark Tank.md criterion 1, in the last 15 minutes of Lesson 7.5.

Homework

None required. Optional and useful: ask one adult at home what jobs they have had and what got them hired, and write down one sentence they say. Bring it tomorrow. Anything that belongs in the experience section and is not in the FACS folder (a team, a church group, a job helping a relative) should be written on the back of the mining sheet tonight.

Connections

Inside the building: the ELA teacher. This lesson is the opposite of what ELA usually asks for. A resume bullet is a compressed claim with evidence and no adjectives, which is a real writing move, and the ELA teacher can name it as such. FACS gives ELA a piece of authentic writing with a real audience; ELA gives FACS revision language students already know. Also the school counselor, who keeps the activities and awards records a student may not remember. Community: any local employer who hires at 14 to 16 (a supermarket, a landscaping crew, a camp, a pizza shop) can say in one email what they actually look for on a first resume; quote that email on the slide.

Sources

• NYS Middle Level CTE FACS Content Module 01, Individual Growth and Life Readiness (nyctecenter.org, June 2018 preliminary release), lines 3. d) and 1. c). Copy in 02 Standards/NYS Module PDFs/.
• NYS Middle Level CTE Theme Module 01, Career and Community Opportunities, lines 3. a) and 3. c). Same folder. The module's own Career and Community Opportunities illustrative activity names "creating a resume, identifying references, creating a targeted cover letter, filling out a job application, preparing for a job interview, and sending follow-up communication" as the intended use of the personal-traits work, which is exactly what Topic 7.1 does.
• NYS Learning Standards for Health, Physical Education, and Family and Consumer Sciences (1996), Standard 3, Intermediate, FACS strand. Wording per 02 Standards/STANDARDS SOURCES - web research.md, section 2. [Sal: confirm against the NYSED PDF.]
• NYS CDOS Standard 1, Intermediate. Same file.
• National Standards for Family and Consumer Sciences Education 3.0 (LEAD FCS Education, 2018), competencies 1.2.2 and 1.2.8.
• Sal's own materials: the three-part resume bullet formula (the work, the explanation, the output) is from the Smeal MBA interview guide he used at Penn State and is the formula he used building resumes one on one with more than 87 students at Brentwood South.

Teacher notes

• If time runs short, cut Step 3 to one bullet. Do not cut Step 4. The folder mining is the whole point of putting this unit at the end of the year, and it is what makes the resume real instead of made up.
• The most common thing students leave off is family responsibility: watching siblings, cooking dinner, translating for a parent, handling a grandparent's appointments. Say out loud, early, that those count and how to word them without making them sound like a hardship story. "Prepared dinner for a family of five three nights a week, planning around a food budget" is a resume line.
• The second most common miss is languages. A student who speaks Turkish, Portuguese, or Spanish at home has a skill an employer pays for. Put the languages section on the slide and say so directly.
• Watch for the student who writes nothing because they think nothing they did counts. Walk over with their own folder open to a lab rubric and read the objective line out loud. That usually does it.
• The 45-second look at a real resume is the highest-value 45 seconds in the lesson. Students are surprised it is one page and that it has no paragraphs.
• [Sal: you built resumes one on one with 87 or more students at Brentwood. Decide how much of that story to tell on day one. Telling it sets the expectation that they each get a conference tomorrow, which is the promise of Lesson 7.2.]
• Keep the mining sheets. They are the raw material for Lesson 7.2 and half the class will forget them at home if you let them leave the room.