How to Write Objectives of Learning in a Lesson Plan

Image source

As teachers, we understand that a lesson plan is very crucial in teaching. The lesson plan plays a vital role to be successful in the classroom. While the objectives of learning is a main part that is written on a lesson plan. Writing the objectives of learning is the first early step of a lesson plan which specifies activities, procedures and problems in a teaching process.

Ferguson (1998) defined that :

Objectives of learning in a lesson plan describe the desired behaviours that students will exhibit, or will be able to exhibit after learning situation.

It is required teachers to undertake certain steps in teaching. Those that teachers should determine are planning lesson time, choosing appropriate teaching strategies and material, deciding learning outcomes, and specifying the areas of topic that students might face difficulties. This also highlight the assessment procedures conducted by teacher.

Furthermore, to write the effective and appropriate objective of learning in a lesson plan, the teacher has to determine what the teacher and students are expected to do during learning the topic taught.

The following example is an unclear or inappropriate objectives of learning :

By the end of lesson, students will become skilled listeners and improve their pronunciation.

This example does not prove that to be a useful Guidelines for teacher in planning the techniques and activities accordingly. And, the statement is also not clear how students will be able to improve their pronunciation. The phrase ”skilled listeners” is also confusing.

So that, how to write effective, clear, useful and appropriate objectives of learning in a lesson plan?.
There are several steps to write effective, clear, useful and appropriate objective of learning in lesson plan that suggested by Feguson (1998):

1. Identify the goals of learning

2. Break these goals into compenent learning outcomes

3. Identify current learners competencies

4. Determine the outcomes that need to be sought in learning sessions

5. Write learners-centered objectives for attaining of goals

6. Arrange learning objectives in reasonable teaching sessions.

These steps enables teachers to analyze students’ needs and to focus on what students will attain at the end of lesson. The following examples is clear and specific objective of learning based on ABCD model of lesson plan.

1. Given sentence in the active voice, the students will rewrite these sentences in the passive voice with no errors and tense contradiction.

2. The students will write a paragraph on what they did during their summer holiday using simple past tense wit no errors in terms of the past tense.

3. Listening to a recording about pollution and its harmful effects on the environment, the students will answer the questions, providing at least 7 correct answers.

4. Given a text on how to overcome text anxiety, the students will identify the key solutions to text anxiety with no errors.

These 4 examples of objectives of learning are quite clear and specific. The above objectives indicate what teacher should plan for activities and techniques during the lesson session. Also, they identify what students are expected to do during learning the lesson.

---

References

Ferguson, L. M. (1998). Writing learning objective. Jurnal of Nursing Staff Development, 14(2), 87-94.

Kilickaya, F. (2016). Teaching how to write instructional objectives to pre-service language teachers through the ABCD Model. New Insight into Language Teaching and learning Practices, 41-52.

---

Regards,
Mrs. Don