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Effective Learning Objectives

Learning objectives help both teachers and students focus on what individual lessons hope to achieve and these learning objectives are more important when Ofsted observes us and queries whether the learning objectives are effective. This does not mean to say that some lessons will always stick rigidly to the learning objective, as group discussion and thought processes can lead us naturally away from them. However, the key here is ‘naturally’. Lively and engaging debates carried out with enquiring students are a joy for all to experience. It can be difficult, therefore, to feel that Ofsted would rate poorly the lesson that does not meet its learning objective, but there must be a balance and a recognition that the discussion has taken us on a different path and we would return to our original path during the next lesson.

Effective learning objectives can easily fall into the same ‘vocabulary trap’ each lesson and they could end up sounding repetitive. The Pedagogy and Practice Packs (link to moodle, Unit 1, Structuring Learning) has some useful advice about how to set learning objectives and the categories for these.

Using questions as learning objectives

Setting learning objectives as a question is useful for a number of reasons; the question such as ‘can I select information from a text to show the writer’s opinion?’ can be explored in the plenary as a way of encouraging students’ motivation, assessing progress and as a way of challenging those students who have met the learning objective to go ‘one step beyond’. Using questions as learning objectives also makes teachers reflect more on the content and structure of a lesson when creating lessons. What is it you really want students to achieve when you are designing your lesson plans?

Try devising learning objectives as questions for your next few lessons and see how they work. ( faq link/email me)

Statements as learning objectives and the importance of verbs

Another way of formulating a learning objective is by writing statements, such as ‘by the end of this lesson I/we will …’. Again, the plenary is useful to check student progress against the learning objective. Some verbs need to be avoided in any types of learning objectives (either the questions or statements) as they can be misinterpreted or be too vague to allow for accurate measurement of progress. Avoid, as far as is practicable, the following verbs; know, learn, enjoy, appreciate, understand, realize. If you feel you need to use these verbs, qualify them by using words such as ‘By the end of this lesson, I will begin to understand Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet’. However, even with the qualifier, ‘begin to’ in your learning objective you need to bear in mind how you will measure progress. If we are more effective with our learning objectives, we can break down the knowledge we want our students to have into accessible chunks and, in terms of Shakespeare, we can re-phrase the original learning objective. For example, what is it we want our students to understand about Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet? By considering what we want students to achieve, our original learning objective becomes, ‘By the end of the lesson, I will be able to summarize the plot in Act 1, Scene 1.’

Verbs to use when creating effective learning objectives

The lists of verbs below are linked into levels of thought and address areas of skill that you may wish your students to reach. These verbs could help us to hone in on particular areas of skill that students need to attain during the lesson and are more effective as they are more precise than the all-encompassing verbs mentioned above. Select the ones you wish to use.

Knowledge – basic recall of facts and data

Count	Relate	Define
Provide	Distinguish	Review
Draw	Read	State
Recall	Tabulate	List
Recite	Trace	Name
Recognize	Underline	Record

Comprehension – understanding information

Associate	Distinguish	Locate
Classify	Edit	Predict
Compare	Estimate	Rephrase
Extrapolate	Restate	Conclude
Rewrite	Give in own terms	Contrast
Infer	Summarize	Describe
Interpret	Translate	Differentiate

Application – applying information to a new situation or context

Apply	Illustrate	Produce
Calculate	Implement	Purchase
Choose	Increase	Relate
Complete	Install	Repair
Conduct	Modify	Show
Demonstrate	Order	Solve
Discover	Practice	Transfer
Employ	Prepare	Utilize

Analysis – breaking information down and looking at individual parts

Analyze	Distinguish	Investigate
Classify	Divide	Outline
Compare	Examine	Point out
Construct	Explain	Reduce
Deduce	Group	Relate
Detect	Indentify	Separate
Diagram	Illustrate	Summarize
Differentiate	Infer	Transform