Crafting Your CV

Overview

Students examine how a CV presents skills, experience, interests, and goals for a specific audience. They then draft a clear, age-appropriate CV for a part-time job, volunteering opportunity, school role, or work-experience placement, using formal language and accurate grammar.

Learning intentions

Students will:

• understand the purpose, audience, and structure of a CV
• select relevant information and present it clearly
• use formal, positive, and precise language
• edit their writing for accuracy, layout, and impact

Success criteria

I can:

• organise my CV using clear headings
• describe my skills and experiences using specific examples
• choose a suitable tone for an employer or organisation
• check my spelling, punctuation, grammar, and contact details

Curriculum links

• English — Language Studies: Crafting Texts, persuasive texts: crafting texts for specific audiences and contexts, with an appropriate tone, level of formality, and structure
• English — Language Studies: Crafting Texts, creative and crafted texts: using language and structural features to shape how ideas are conveyed
• English — Working with Texts: creating texts for different audiences and purposes, using effective language and accurate grammar

Lesson structure (60 minutes)

1. 0–5 min · Hook: What makes someone employable? Teacher displays the question, “Would you employ someone with no paid work experience?” using the opening discussion slide, then gathers quick responses. Students think-pair-share and identify qualities an employer might value, such as reliability, communication, teamwork, initiative, or problem-solving.

2. 5–15 min · Explore the model CV. Teacher uses the model CV slides to show the purpose and typical sections of a CV: contact details, personal profile, education, skills, experience, achievements, interests, and referees. Students annotate the CV analysis and planning worksheet by identifying the audience, tone, effective features, and one improvement they would make to the model.

3. 15–25 min · Language mini-lesson. Teacher models how to replace vague claims with specific evidence, for example, changing “I am good at helping people” to “I supported younger students during lunchtime activities.” Students improve three weak statements on the worksheet, using strong verbs such as organised, communicated, created, assisted, solved, and contributed.

4. 25–40 min · Plan and draft. Teacher explains that students may create a CV for a realistic opportunity suited to their age, such as a weekend job, volunteering role, school leadership position, sports coaching role, or work experience. Students complete the planning section, then draft their CV using the worksheet and the CV drafting checklist slide. Students who do not have formal experience use school responsibilities, whānau contributions, clubs, hobbies, projects, or community involvement as evidence of transferable skills.

5. 40–52 min · Peer review. Teacher demonstrates respectful, useful feedback using the prompts “One strength is…” and “One change that would make this clearer is…”. Students swap drafts with a partner and use the peer feedback sentence stem cards to give feedback on structure, audience, tone, evidence, and accuracy. Each writer chooses at least two improvements to make.

6. 52–60 min · Edit and exit reflection. Teacher displays the final editing and reflection slides and asks students to complete a final check. Students edit their CV, then respond at the bottom of the worksheet: “The skill I have shown most clearly is…” and “The next improvement I will make is…”. Invite two or three students to share an effective sentence.

Resources

• the CV lesson slide deck
• the CV analysis and planning worksheet
• the peer feedback sentence stem cards
• Examples of age-appropriate job, volunteering, or school-role advertisements
• Pens, highlighters, and lined paper or digital writing devices
• Board or projector

Assessment

• During discussion and annotation, check that students can identify a CV’s purpose, audience, structure, and formal tone.
• Confer with students during drafting, checking that claims are supported by specific examples rather than unsupported adjectives.
• Collect or photograph the draft and use the exit reflection to identify students who need further support with organisation, evidence, or editing.

Differentiation

• Provide a word bank of action verbs, skill examples, headings, and sentence starters such as “I developed this skill when…” and “I contributed by…”.
• Offer a partially completed CV template, a model personal profile, speech-to-text, typing, or teacher/peer scribing for students who need writing support.
• Support EAL learners with explicit teaching of formal vocabulary, visual examples, partner discussion before writing, and permission to plan ideas in their strongest language.
• Extend confident writers by asking them to tailor the same CV to two different opportunities and explain how their profile, skills, and tone change for each audience.