Writing Learning Objectives That Actually Guide Your Teaching

Learning objectives are the most maligned component of lesson planning. Teachers write them for administrative compliance, students read them off the board without absorbing them, and the lesson proceeds regardless of whether the objective is met. But when done well, learning objectives transform how you plan and teach. Here's what that looks like.

The Problem with Generic Objectives

Most learning objectives are too vague to guide instruction or assessment:

• "Students will understand the Civil War"
• "Students will learn about fractions"
• "Students will appreciate poetry"

These objectives tell you almost nothing about what students should be able to do or how you'll know if they got there. A teacher could deliver literally any lesson about the Civil War and claim alignment with the first objective.

The fix is specificity about what students will be able to DO — observable, measurable actions that you can actually assess.

Bloom's Taxonomy as a Tool, Not a Checklist

Bloom's Taxonomy orders thinking skills from lower to higher: Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, Create. It's often taught as a list of verbs teachers should use, which produces objectives with sophisticated-sounding verbs that don't actually mean anything ("students will evaluate the French Revolution").

Bloom's is more useful as a planning tool: what level of thinking does this lesson require?

A lesson on calculating fractions might primarily be at the "Apply" level. A lesson on comparing fractions across different problem contexts hits "Analyze." A lesson where students design a problem that requires fraction division touches "Create."

Knowing the intended cognitive level helps you design activities that actually operate at that level, rather than activities that claim analysis and produce recall.

Writing Useful Objectives

A useful learning objective specifies:

• Who: Students (obvious, but it anchors the objective in student learning)
• Will be able to: signals a capability being developed
• Action verb: what students will be able to DO (analyze, explain, write, calculate, compare, identify)
• Content: what they'll do it WITH
• Condition or criterion (optional but helpful): to what degree, under what conditions, with what quality

Weak: "Students will understand the causes of the Civil War."

Strong: "Students will be able to identify at least three causes of the Civil War and explain the relationship between them using evidence from primary sources."

The strong objective tells you what students will do (identify and explain), what they'll do it with (causes of the Civil War, primary sources), and how well (at least three causes, using evidence).

Objectives Shared with Students

Sharing objectives with students before a lesson is widely practiced but often performed rather than meaningful. Objectives written in teacher language ("students will analyze the rhetorical strategies in Lincoln's second inaugural address") don't help students understand what they're working toward.

Reframe objectives in student language: "By the end of today, you'll be able to explain three things Lincoln was trying to do in this speech and point to specific words that show it."

Student-friendly objectives give students a goal to work toward and a way to self-assess whether they got there. The exit ticket or end-of-lesson reflection connects directly: "Did you get where we said we were going?"

Using Objectives to Design Assessment

If your objective is clear, your assessment almost designs itself. A lesson where students "will be able to calculate the area of irregular shapes using decomposition" has an obvious assessment: give students an irregular shape and ask them to calculate its area, showing their decomposition strategy.

When assessment and objective are tightly aligned, grading becomes faster (you know exactly what you're looking for) and feedback becomes more specific (you can identify exactly where the gap is).

A Word on Coverage vs. Learning

The most honest thing learning objectives force is a confrontation with what you're actually trying to accomplish. "Cover chapter 8" is not a learning objective. Neither is "get through the French Revolution."

When you have to write what students will be able to DO at the end of a lesson, you're forced to answer: what is this lesson actually for? That question, uncomfortable as it sometimes is, produces better teaching.

Learning objectives done well are planning tools, teaching guides, and learning communicators simultaneously. They're worth the two extra minutes of thought they require.