Set The Right Goals—Writing A High-Quality Lesson Plan’s Objective

We’ve all heard students say, “I’ll never need this in my life.” 

Teacher, forgive them, for they do not know what they are saying. They don’t know how hard you’ve worked on your lesson plan and how much thought you need to put into each lesson plan’s objective.

It’s you who knoweth the true value of preparation. You get that entering the classroom without a clear understanding of what you need to accomplish before the bell rings may cause things to go south—fast. 

But how can you be sure that the goal of your lesson is indeed well-written and precise enough? We’ll show you how to do this and give you both good and bad examples to ensure your lesson objectives never miss the mark.

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What Should Your Lesson Plan Objectives Look Like?

A lesson plan objective should give you a clear and concise idea of what you want to achieve with a lesson. You’ll write the rest of the lesson plan to help you accomplish your objective.

Think of it as a lighthouse that helps you stay on course while navigating the treacherous waters of keeping the students’ attention alive and kicking. 

In practice, an objective is a sentence that needs to be S.M.A.R.T.:

• Specific 
• Measurable
• Attainable
• Relevant
• Timely

The difference between a well-written and poorly defined objective is whether or not it hits all these boxes. If you can’t measure an objective, how can you know if you’ve achieved it?

An objective must provide answers to why, how, and when.

How To Write an Objective for a Lesson Plan—Bloom’s Taxonomy

The first step in writing an objective is choosing a measurable and specific verb. Depending on what you’re teaching and the age group you’re working with, you’ll need to choose an active verb that’s adjusted to your students’ abilities. You need to have lower expectations when writing a lesson plan for first and second graders than you would with high school students.

According to Bloom’s taxonomy, there are six levels of learning:

1. Remembering
2. Understanding
3. Applying
4. Analyzing
5. Evaluating
6. Creating

These levels are arranged in a specific hierarchy, meaning that you need to start from the first one and go forward. You can’t use a kindergarten lesson plan and expect the students to provide a critical evaluation of the provided information.

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Verbs To Use in a Lesson Plan Objective

Every level of learning has an appropriate set of active verbs that you can use to write a measurable objective. You need to avoid verbs such as know, understand, appreciate, learn, be familiar, analyze, and others that don’t express a result you can quantify and assess.

Check out the table below to see some examples of verbs that you can use for each level of learning:

Note that some verbs can appear in different stages of learning. For instance, you can ask students to compare information in comprehension, analysis, and evaluation stages, but the level of comparison needs to be more advanced as your students progress through Bloom’s pyramid of learning.

The ABCDs of Writing Objectives for Lesson Plans

Apart from choosing an appropriate verb, the rest of your lesson plan objective also needs to be written in line with the S.M.A.R.T. acronym. A well-thought-out objective covers every aspect of the lesson and answers every question regarding your lesson plan.

You can refer to the ABCD checklist to ensure you hit all the necessary points within your objective. The ABCDs of writing a lesson plan objective are as follows:

1. Audience—Who is the objective for? You should aim your objective at students and not yourself
2. Behavior—What will students achieve? Use a measurable and specific verb to show what students will gain after completing a lesson
3. Condition—How will students show their improvement? You should define the exact conditions under which they will need to demonstrate their knowledge, skill, or attitude
4. Degree—How well should students be able to perform? This element of the objective defines the minimum criteria that students need to fulfill to reach the goal

For more context, here’s an example of a well-written objective split into its ABCDs:

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Lesson Plan Objective Examples

A lesson plan objective depends on a variety of factors, including grade, subject, and students’ learning abilities. Another important factor is the lesson plan’s scope, i.e., whether you’re using a weekly lesson plan template or you want to plan an individual lesson instead.

If you’re struggling to come up with a specific, measurable, and time-bound objective, go through these examples to see what a well-written objective should look like:

• After reading From Caterpillar to butterfly students can draw a diagram of a butterfly life cycle in a graphic organizer
• Students can name all parts of a compass rose accurately after learning the song about cardinal directions
• After the lesson about the Pythagorean theorem, students are able to solve eight out of ten geometry problems using the theorem
• Students can contrast Poe’s tone with that of another Romantic author in a short essay after reading The Tell-Tale Heart

Bad Examples of Objectives in a Lesson Plan

Great objectives use active verbs that you can quantify easily and say with certainty whether the wanted action has been completed or not. Bad objectives are too vague and don’t tell what students need to do, when they should do it, and how. They usually don’t focus on a single behavior but list out several at the same time.

To make sure you don’t make the same mistakes, check out the examples of what your lesson plan objectives shouldn’t look like:

• Enjoy speaking Chinese
• After the lesson, students will be familiar with the American law
• Students will learn about lakes
• Students will understand the process of photosynthesis
• By the end of the lesson, students should write a summary, recall parts of the story orally, and predict what will happen next in the story
• By the end of the course, students will have a deeper appreciation of literature in the 20th century

Struggling With Your Lesson Plans? Use a Ready-Made One

Nobody becomes a teacher to get bogged down in filling out administrative forms and lesson plan templates. If you write your own lesson plans, you might spend hours staring at an empty sheet of paper, trying to think of every single detail you need for your lesson. 

The good news is that you can find ready-made lesson plans online. The not-so-good news is that there are plenty of poorly written resources out there (especially free ones). So, how do you find a good one?

You can find thousands of lesson plans online for every grade, from preschool to high school, covering various subjects, such as math, physics, and life studies. The catch is that the majority of these websites charge per download and offer a preview that doesn’t give enough information about a lesson plan.

You need to spend hundreds of dollars each year to go through lesson plans that are ultimately unusable. A large portion of these plans don’t meet curriculum standards, don’t have clear, well-defined objectives, and don’t take into account various learning styles.

The only way to avoid spending money on useless lesson plans is to avoid being charged per download. You don’t walk into a classroom with a collection basket and go from one student to another before you start teaching, either.

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