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By Chloe Johnson
November 23, 2016
As a continuation from my previous story about Technical
Reading and Writing class, the juniors are now finishing up creating cover
letters. The Technical Reading and Writing course is taken by juniors and teaches students
about communicating concise and specific information.
As a part of their professional/business
communication unit, the juniors created resumes, and they are now finishing
their cover letters. The professional/business communication unit is about
writing pieces between employers and employees. Students created these cover
letters to go along with their resumes.
The resumes and cover letters are to
help the juniors locate and secure potential internship locations. Most
students will not have to submit a cover letter with their resume to an
internship location, but their cover letters can be a template for emails,
interviews, or any other types of communications with potential internship hosts.
Students were first introduced to cover letters by Nikki
Greenwood on November 1st and 2nd when she presented to
the Technical Reading and Writing classes. During her presentation, she stated,
“Cover letters take the same skills and experiences as the resumes and expand
on them.” Ms. Greenwood, also said, “Don’t repeat the resume in paragraph form
and use personality within the cover letter.”
One of my favorite tips for the
cover letter from Ms. Greenwood was, “Do specific research on the business to
show interest and curiosity for the job.” When Mrs. McDaniel, the Technical
Reading and Writing teacher, reintroduced the cover letters to the students,
she repeated some of the key tips.
At first, the students learned about the STAR technique.
STAR stands for "situation, task, action, and result." Each student chose one
experience from their resume and expanded on it using the STAR method. For
example, I personally chose newsroom to expand on.
My STAR method was “as a
junior, I was selected to be my school’s newspaper’s editor-in-chief. Three
times a week in the morning, we meet with our instructor to go over the
stories, marketing, and current events for that week. On a weekly basis, there are at least three stories being uploaded.”
Once the students
began using the STAR method, they used templates and looked at examples of
other cover letters. Within a cover letter, there are three sections including:
introduction, argument, and closing. The introduction explains the purpose of
the cover letter and who the student is, the argument explains why the student
has the qualifications to obtain the internship, and the closing states the
actions the student will take after getting in contact with the potential
internship.
The students gave each other feedback on both content and
grammar for the cover letter. The information was required to fit onto one page
and had to correspond with the same design as the resumes.
When asked what he
learned during this experience, Dylan Flippo, a junior at DRSS, said, “Through
this experience, I learned how to write about my skills that will benefit
employers.” When asked how this will help him for the future, Dylan stated, “I
want to be a nurse. I believe this experience will better help me convey
conditions to the patients and state things concisely.” Dylan also added “The
business/professional communication unit was a really good project because it
helps students have a basis for their resumes and cover letters for the future.”
The final due date for the cover letters was Monday, November 28, 2016.
Afterwards, the students will move on to participating in an interview workshop
during their professional/business communications unit.
