How Do I Determine Objectives for My Lesson Plan?

Question

Answer

• What are the main desired learning outcomes for the children?
• Objectives must reflect the domain focus and overall goals of the lesson
• Objectives must be addressed throughout the lesson
• Limit number of objectives…be selective and realistic  

The objectives section of the lesson plan is a hearty part of lesson planning. Your objectives are what you want the children to achieve. These are the outcomes that you hope the children will be able to do at the end of a lesson. Your objectives should be targeting the domain, so if I am targeting math in the cognitive area and I have some objectives that are dealing with addition or counting, that certainly fits the domain focus. But if my domain focus is art and my objectives are more related to math, that doesn't fit really well. It's important to make sure that objectives reflect what the focus of your plan is. Objectives should be able to be addressed or seen throughout your lesson. They might be seen a little bit in the introduction and certainly in the questioning or the main activity.

I caution people when they are writing lesson plans to be realistic with the number of objectives that can be targeted in a particular lesson. Sometimes for those of us that use a certain set of standards for our lessons, it's easy to flip through the standards and find 15 objectives that you think your lesson's going to address. However, in a 20-minute lesson with three-year-olds, you may not get to those 15 objectives. I tell my students to be realistic and have no more than three objectives. The number you choose is up to you, but three is reasonable. Less than three is fine too. I tell my students they don't have to have three, they can have just one objective that is the main focus of your activity and is what the children are going to be able to do at the end of this activity. It's realistic to have a small number so that you're certain that you are addressing it and you're certain those children are able to actually accomplish what you're setting out for them to accomplish without you getting disappointed and the children being overwhelmed.

Writing Objectives

• The conditions of the objectives describe the materials or supports the child will use to engage in the learning process.
• The behavior portion of the objective identifies a specific child action that will signify that the objective has been achieved. 
• Given/after…., the child will….

You may be writing your own objectives based on what you know young children should be able to do at certain ages or the skills that they should be able to do within a particular grade or setting, or you may have specific required objectives or standards that you're following. If you are writing your own objectives, a simple way to think about writing them is to think about what's happening, the conditions, that will help this child be able to do a behavior, which is the action that they're able to do at the end of the lesson.

I always think of conditions and behaviors. For example, if I say, "After playing shape bingo, (there's the condition) the child will be able to identify four basic shapes." That objective tells specifically what that child would be able to do at the end of the activity or situation, or the conditions. The objectives should always be reflective of the children's relationship with that activity. Objectives show what the children should be able to do so that when you are assessing to determine if kids could actually do what you said they were going to do, you should clearly be able to identify that. You should be able to see it, hear it, ask a question and find out if the kids could do that.

Targeting Required Objectives/Standards

You may be writing specific objectives, where you're saying, "Given this activity or given these situations, kids will be able to do this." In my situation and what my students are being trained to do is to actually take a required standard, such as the Kansas Early Learning Standards, and write an objective from that.  For example, look at Kansas Early Learning Standard CL.F.p3.1c: Recognizes letters in their name. This standard is communication and literacy and is for three-year-old children. The standard is for them to be able to recognize letters in their name. It doesn't give you the conditions, it just gives you the behavior portion. The main activity that we write helps set the stage for how children will be able to recognize letters in their names. That is a simple way to write your objectives.

Even if you're not using a particular set of standards or a particular curriculum, there are plenty of them out there that you can find that may fit your needs as you write objectives. This can keep you from having to reinvent the wheel and trying to guess what children of certain ages should be able to do. If you don't have specific standards or objectives or a curriculum that you're following, it might be helpful to look and see what your state has set for the age group that you're working with, or look at some different curriculums that target the type of program that you're working in. Even if you're not using that particular curriculum in its entirety, it gives you a starting point for what would be some good practices for working with young children.

Sometimes I know what my objectives are, such as I know that children are going to need to recognize letters in their names, so I'm going to design an activity that supports that. It may be that I know that my children are always going to be signing in and they're going to be recognizing letters in their name, so they're going to be addressing that standard. This is where it's hard to determine if the activity comes before the objectives or the objectives come before the activity. When you are writing lesson plans, sometimes you don't start and write them in the order of the boxes that are on the template. Sometimes you jump around depending on your thought process as you're going through that actual planning process.

This Ask the Expert is an edited excerpt from the course, Writing Effective Lesson Plans for Early Childhood Classrooms, by Amber Tankersley, PhD.