Skill Building: Professional Communication

Materials and Resources

Essential Question: How can I communicate effectively about myself, my experiences, and my ideas in a professional setting?

Learning Targets:

What do you want students to learn today?

  • Communication is an essential skill for success.

  • The skills that you have are more valuable if you can express them effectively.

  • Confidence and competence create circles of success.

Success Criteria:

How will students and teachers know learning targets have been met?

  • I can communicate my thoughts and ideas.

Core Content Anchor Standards:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.W.4
Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.W.5
Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.9-10.1
Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.

Essential Skills: communication, initiative, self-management, resourcefulness, dependability

Standards for Career Ready Practice:

  • Communicate clearly, effectively, and with reason.

  • Apply technology to enhance productivity.

  • Utilize critical thinking to make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.

  • Understand the environmental, social, and economic impacts of decisions.

Experience

Launching the learning and making connections to past knowledge.

Time needed for this section: 20 minutes.

Pass out blank paper to each student. Then ask them to draw the instructions for making toast. Keep the instructions simple and vague as to not influence their drawings. Then set and start a timer for 3-5 minutes.

When the drawings are finished instruct students to tape their drawings around the room. Have students do a gallery walk and notice the things that are or aren’t included in the drawings. For example:

  • What was the first step? Are there steps that are needed before that one?

  • Are people featured, or is the focus all on the materials (bread, toaster, butter, knife, etc.)? 

  • If someone followed these directions exactly would they end up with toast or with something else? 

Optional Extension Activity: Put students steps into action. First, supply real toast-making ingredients and tools like bread, butter, a toaster, knife, etc. However, keep them out of sight until after the drawings are complete so they won’t influence people’s drawings. Then, ask volunteers to explain their drawing while another student volunteer follows their directions exactly.  Make sure that the student who is making the toast doesn’t move or begin a step without specifically being told to do so. This extra step helps to further emphasize that not communicating effectively can change the outcome of a situation.

Discover

Discover something new.

Time needed for this section: 10 minutes.

Lead a class discussion on the importance of communicating in a way that gets your point across correctly. Some questions that can be posed to the group are:

  • What are some negative consequences if someone does not correctly understand your message? Note: to make sure students get to the intended points you may want to give some examples of times that communication is necessary. For example: giving someone instructions on how to do something, following directions to setup furniture, explaining to a teacher why a logical reason that an assignment was late and asking for late credit.

  • What are some steps that you can take to make sure that the correctly intended message is received?

Expected student responses:

  • If someone doesn’t understand your message they could complete the task incorrectly.

  • Someone could get hurt if they do not know the directions.

  • You may fail a class if your teacher doesn’t get your assignments.

  • Steps that you can take to communicate clearly are:

    • Be specific and detailed

    • Don’t make assumptions about what information a person already has

Time needed for this section: 20 minutes.

Ask students to read the following scenario and assume the role of the person in the story. 

“Your history teacher has asked you to go home and interview a parent about their past and bring the notes from the interview back to school the next day. You go home with the full intention of completing the assignment, but when you get home your parents tell you that your grandma passed away and you need to fly to a different state in the morning to be with your family. You completely forget about the assignment because you are so upset about the death in your family. The next day you get to the airport and realize that you need to tell your teacher that you will not be in class and ask for an extension on the assignment. Write an email to your teacher explaining your situation.”

Task students with writing an email to their teacher explaining why they were not able to complete the assignment and asking for a time extension.

Define

Seeing the new discovering in action.

Have students evaluate their email using the checklist of the Seven C’s of Communication. Students should grade themselves using this checklist as a rubric. For each “c” students can give themselves a 0-5 score. 0 being “not met at all” and 5 being “fully met.” Then, students should add up their scores and give themselves an email score that will range from 0-35. Ask volunteers to share their emails and score with the class.

Optional Extension Activity: Have students grade each other’s emails as they are being read aloud. Does the class agree with the score?

Reflect

Applying the information to real life.

Model for students important structural components of email that are unique to the type of communication. These components are:

  • Clear and appropriate subject

    • When addressing a teacher this should include the class name and period that the student has the class

  • Addressed to a person professionally 

    • Should the email say “Hey Teach” or “Good Morning Mr. Smith,”?

  • Sign off and signature using full name

Have students edit their emails to raise their scores and include these additional elements.

Optional Extension Activities:

  • Have students trade emails with a partner and do peer editing.

  • Give students another scenario to write an email about and see if their scores are higher now that they have more information about effective communication.

  • Pass out pictures of simple drawings. Ask students to sit back-to-back. Instruct Student A look at the drawing and give verbal instructions of how to draw the picture to Student B. After a few minutes compare the two pictures? Did the students use effective communication strategies?

Conclude the workshop by asking students to reflect on when they would need this information in the future.