Are your lesson objectives about your teaching or their learning?

When I started teaching my attention was all on me and what I was doing.

Understandably I was nervous.

It would start before I even got in the classroom. From crafting elegant, amazing PowerPoints through to setting intricate timings for activities.

As I improved my lesson planning, I came to rely on well-written lesson objectives.

But defining a lesson objective is tricky. I found something online that describes my thinking:

Defining learning objective is complicated by the fact that educators use a wide variety of terms for learning objectives, and the terms may or may not be used synonymously from place to place. For example, the terms student learning objective, benchmark, grade-level indicator, learning target, performance indicator, and learning standard—to name just a few of the more common terms—may refer to specific types of learning objectives in specific educational contexts. Educators also create a wide variety of homegrown terms for learning objectives—far too many to catalog here.

The Glossary of Educational Reform (For Journalists, Parents, and Community Members)

Here’s how my lesson objectives have changed (or evolved like a Pokemon*).

Just for fun, have a go at reading the following out loud. I feel they become more considered and mature…as I like to think I have in my career.

(For context – I teach Business.)

1. (I need them to) understand breakeven.
2. (How can I get them to?) understand breakeven
3. (By the end of the lesson you WILL) understand breakeven
4. Using your knowledge of revenue, cost, and profit discover how to calculate breakeven (a_what do the pupils know right now? b_what do pupils need to know? c_how will I know that they know?)

You may hear the exasperation of a newly qualified/ early careers teacher at the beginning.

From what I’ve discovered, a lesson objective is what I expect the pupils to know by the end of the lesson – and I know that they know it.

The way I think about and create lesson objectives has changed because my attention has shifted from what I’m doing to what’s going on with them.

It’s a subtle and powerful difference.

I invite you to ask yourself: are your lesson objectives about your teaching – or their learning? *The picture for this is post is my creation as the content here is part of a TeachMeet where I presented my ideas about changing lesson objectives.