Teachers are constantly walking a fine line. Because of standards. I believe that standards need to be in place for there to be a guiding force behind state testing and teacher accountability. It also allows for autonomy across the state and/or district so students the same grade should be learning the same content.
HOWEVER, I don't believe that there should be state standards and district standards (not all districts have state standards. Both districts that I worked for did). I think it would be the best for our children if the standards were nationwide. But, that really isn't the point of this post.
The heart of lesson planning is what we are teaching. What we are teaching is the objective. I've always had a hard time writing objectives. The two questions I always bounced back between are:
1) Standards--What am I supposed to be teaching based on the standards and pacing guide?
2) Students--What do I want my students to learn?
When writing objectives, teachers also need to take into account their students' progression. And, of course, it's always difficult because my classes were never at the exact same skill level. Some classes struggled with poetry while at the same time they excelled with vocabulary and context clues.
Okay, enough talking. Here are some guidelines to help you write objectives.
Steps to writing an objective:
1. Find your standard or pacing guide. Whatever objective you write it absolutely, must match a standard. We teachers are not allowed to teach our own standards, no matter how much more sensible they may seem.
2. Ask yourself a question using your standard as a guide. "What do I want my students to learn?" By the end of class period, what do you want your students to get out of it?
The next post I write on objectives will have examples of objectives. Sometime, I may even get into writing language objectives as well! Happy objective writing!
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