Slide outline for Lesson 7.2. Ten slides, one day. Slides 4, 5, and 8 stay up during the drafting block; the room needs the structure visible for fourteen minutes while the teacher is in conferences and cannot answer questions.
Build Your Resume
- Unit 7, Lesson 7.2, Topic 7.1 Present Yourself
- Today you hand me a real one
- Not a practice one
Teacher notes
Image: a single sheet of paper and a pencil on a plain desk.
Mining sheets go back at the door. Folders are on the desks. Pencils, not pens; this is a draft and it will get crossed out.
Do now
- This is a resume for a made-up eighth grader
- Everything on it came from this class
- Find ONE line you could write today. Write it down
Teacher notes
Image: the worked example resume from Handout 7.2 shown whole, small, so the shape is visible and the text is not readable from a distance.
Take three answers in 90 seconds. Then the hook: "You are handing me a real one by the end of this period. One you could give an adult this summer."
Dev Okonkwo is not real
- Every line on this resume came from something this class actually does
- Check it against your own folder
- You have the same evidence
Teacher notes
Say this plainly if a student says it is fake. Yes, the person is invented; the evidence is not.
What this resume does that first drafts do not
- One page. No paragraphs
- Every bullet has a number, or a named group of people, or both
- Experience leads with school and family work
- It never says "hard worker" or "team player." It shows them
- The summary says what kind of WORK, not what kind of person
- Languages are there
Teacher notes
Six things, thirty seconds each. Students circle the summary line and underline the output in three bullets on their own copy.
The seven sections, again
- Name and contact: town, school email, phone optional. Not your street address
- Summary: one sentence
- Skills: six to nine. End with languages
- Experience: strongest first. School, volunteer, family, paid
- Activities. Awards. Languages
Teacher notes
Leave this up through the drafting block. It is the slide students will look at while you are in conferences.
The three-part bullet, again
- The work. The explanation. The output.
- Verb first. Not "I"
- A number, a quantity, or a named group of people in every bullet
Teacher notes
Also stays up. The two-minute conference will fix the bullets one at a time; this slide fixes the ones you do not get to.
While you draft, I am calling people up
- Two minutes each, in order
- Bring the draft and the mining sheet
- Everyone gets one, today or tomorrow
- Nobody waits to keep working
Teacher notes
Say the last line twice. Students will stop writing while they wait if you let them. Start the rotation from yesterday's exit-card pile.
The conference, in four moves
- Read me your summary line
- I pick your weakest bullet
- Three questions: how many? for whom? what came out of it?
- Say the fixed bullet out loud. Then write it
Teacher notes
Putting the script on a slide makes the conference predictable, which makes it faster and less frightening. Students rehearse it in their heads before they get called.
Partner check. Eight items.
- All seven sections have something in them
- One page, no paragraphs
- A summary line that names a kind of work
- Five bullets with all three parts
- Four bullets with a number or a named group
- Experience includes something unpaid
- Languages listed
- Every line is something my partner can point to. I asked about one
Teacher notes
Read all eight aloud once. Set the rule: you mark the checklist, you do not rewrite your partner's resume, and every "no" comes with the missing part named.
Before you file it
- Make at least one change from the partner check
- Write this sentence at the bottom:
- "An employer can now picture ___, which they could not before"
- Two volunteers read theirs
Teacher notes
Collect the draft, the mining sheet, and the marked checklist as one set. Then: "Tomorrow you find out what happens when somebody asks you about this out loud."