Lesson Plan

Telecommunications Skills: Using the Telephone

Objective:Students willdifferentiate the use of the telephone in professional vs. private settings.

Workplace Readiness Skill: Demonstrate telecommunications skills.

Definition: Demonstration includes selecting and using telecommunications devices (e.g., portable digital assistants, smart devices, cellular phones), services (e.g., digital subscriber line, cellular network, cable, Internet), and web-based applications (e.g., webmail, social networking, online auctions, wikis), appropriate to work assignments.

Correlations to Other Workplace Readiness Skills:

  • Demonstrate positive work ethic.
  • Demonstrate self-representation skills.
  • Demonstrate effective speaking and listening skills.
  • Demonstrate effective reading and writing skills.
  • Demonstrate an understanding of workplace organizations, systems, and climates.
  • Demonstrate time-, task-, and resource-management skills.
  • Demonstrate customer-service skills.

Correlations to Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL):

  • English: 6.1, 6.2, 6.6, 6.7, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.6, 7.7, 8.2, 8.6, 8.7, 9.1, 9.5, 10.1, 10.5, 11.5, 12.5
  • History and Social Science: CE.14

Instructional Steps:

  1. Ask students to think about ways that we use the telephone today in personal/private vs. business/public settings. Discuss the differences between the two.
  1. Compare personal vs. workplace phone conversations using a Venn diagram. Ask students to share ideas with a partner. Have students take notes using the Venn diagram on Handout #1. Lead the students in addressing how the following is different in personal vs. professional phone conversations:
  1. Greeting
  2. Vocabulary used
  3. Tone and inflection of voice
  4. Setting (e.g., background noise)
  1. Lead students in discussing the following:
  1. How can the tone of a person’s voice convey professionalism?
  2. Why might an employer care about the greeting used when answering the phone in the workplace?
  3. What impression might a customer get when calling a business and hearing a lot of background noise?
  1. Assign group work: apply knowledge of professional phone etiquette in the workplace.Using the scenarios in Handout #2, ask students to work in groups to read (or watch) their assigned scenario, discuss it, and complete the questions on Handout #3. The groups must be ready to share ideas with the class.
  2. Reconvene and discuss scenarios. As a class, discuss each scenario briefly. Ask each group to give an overview of what the scenario was about and what they learned by working with it. Record student ideas that will become the basis for their “Tip Sheets” (see Formative Assessment).

Formative Assessment:

  • Ask each student to create a “Tip Sheet: Dos and Don’ts of Telephone Use in the Workplace.” Assess their work based upon the “Tip Sheet Rubric” provided.
  • Hold mock phone conversations if time allows. Have one student play the role of a customer with questions and the other play the role of a company representative. Peers can assess each other using the “Peer Observation Rubric” provided.

Options for Adaptation/Differentiation:

  • To offer scaffolding to students, a whole-group walk-through of one of the scenarios is an option, as is completing Handout #3 as a whole group.
  • To offer an extension option, student groups could circulate the scenarios so that all groups have the opportunity to work with each scenario.
  • To offer an enrichment opportunity, ask students to create a PowerPoint slide show demonstrating what the class has learned about telephone skills in the workplace.

Suggestions for Follow-up:

  • Display student tip sheets for future reference and application.
  • If the class created a PowerPoint slide show, partner with another class that could benefit from the information and have student representatives present the PowerPoint.
  • Coordinate with your school’s front office staff to allow students (one at a time or in partners) to observe professional telephone skills in action, with the option of students covering school phones for short periods of time under supervision.
  • To build upon these concepts, complete lesson #2, entitled “Flipping the Switch,” found on page 23 of Soft Skills to Pay the Bills — Mastering Soft Skills for Workplace Success ( from the U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Disability Employment Policy.

Teacher Resources

Soft Skills to Pay the Bills — Mastering Soft Skills for Workplace Success ( U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Disability Employment Policy.

Workplace Readiness Skills (WRS) Assessment: Virginia Overview ( Career and Technical Education Consortium of States (CTECS).

Workplace Readiness Skills (WRS) for the Commonwealth: Instructional Resources ( Career and Technical Education (CTE) Resource Center.