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Writing Goals and Objectives
Writing proper goals and objectives is one of the most important things you can do to
structure the learning and activities you plan for your students. You must know where
they are going or have an end in mind (a goal), along with a strategic plan (proper
objectives) for how they will get there. In other words, you must have a meaningful
answer for their question of why do I have to do this? The first and foremost thing you
must do is make the distinction between a goal and an objective. Very simply, goals are
the end products you want your students to produce; goals are what your students will
do with the learning. Objectives are a scaffold of steps that your students will take
toward that end goal. Both goals and objectives must be strategically planned and
connected to each other to ensure a rich and meaningful learning experience for all
students.
Begin with the End in Mind:
Write SMART Unit Goals
What is a SMART goal?
SMART is an acronym that can be used to help ensure that effective and achievable goals
are set for your students. Although there are some variations with letters A, R, and T,
generally a SMART goal is:
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Results-focused
Timely
A qualifying description of each component of the acronym is found below.
Specific
Specific goals are clear and well defined. This helps both the performer (student) and the
manager (teacher/facilitator) because the performer knows what is expected of him and
the manager is able to monitor and assess actual student performance against the specific
goals.
Measurable
Progress towards goals often needs to be monitored while work is under way. It is also
very useful to know when that work has been done and the goals are completed. A
measurable goal achieves this end.
Attainable
When trying to reach a goal, the learner may not be able to achieve it for various reasons
including a lack of skill, not having access to enough resources, and not having
management support. Writing attainable goals ensures that everything is in place and that
if the student does not reach the goals, he cannot reasonably point fingers elsewhere.
Writing attainable goals leaves no room for student excuses.
Results-focused
This is where beginning with the end in mind is most important. Writing results-focused
goals helps to define the purpose of the lesson, activity, or unit. Results-focused goals
ensure that learning is meaningful, relevant, and purposeful.
Timely
SMART goals also have an element of time embedded within. This means a specific
timescale of what is required by when is clearly included. Providing a timescale adds an
appropriate sense of urgency, helping students stay focused on the task and the end result.
EXAMPLES OF SMART GOALS:
After reading To Kill a Mockingbird students will be given three class periods to choose
one critical lens, plan and write a proper Regents task essay with developed ideas, textual
support, and a discussion of key literary elements and devices earning no less than a 4 on
the state rubric.
Given a four-week unit on the novel To Kill a Mockingbird and four class periods in the
computer lab, students will create an electronic publication based on events and
characters in the novel that includes a proper masthead, five news articles with engaging
headlines, two pictures with proper captions, a 200 word editorial, an appropriate
advertisement, and an obituary.
After reading the novel To Kill a Mockingbird and given direct instruction in writing a
Regents Task 3, students will choose an appropriate song or poem that has a connection
to an important character or theme in the novel and write a well-developed formal essay
with an established controlling idea, a detailed explanation of how the poem or song
relates to the novel, and specific textual details earning no less than a 4 on the state
rubric.
Stepping Toward Unit Goals
Writing Strategic Objectives
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Remember, objectives are stepping stones your students will use to reach the end goal.
Writing strategic objectives is the result of understanding that learning is a process that
your students must experience or live through. It is up to you to provide them with
appropriately structured and properly sequenced building blocks or steps that lead to
them doing something meaningful and assessable with the learning. In order to provide
your students with a proper scaffold of learning, use Bloom’s Taxonomy as a guide.
Benjamin Bloom developed his taxonomy of learning after years of studying human
development and how the brain learns. There are six levels of understanding, each
clearly building on each other.
Lower Levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy are considered surface learning and are the basis of
most lessons early on in a planned unit or learning experience.



Knowledge – the facts
Comprehension – proof of understanding
Application – using the knowledge or facts
Upper Levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy are considered higher order thinking skills that
provide for a much deeper level of understanding. These levels are used as some of the
final steps of achieving the goals of the unit or planned learning experience.



Analysis – looking at the parts of the knowledge
Synthesis – doing something new with the learning
Evaluation – judging the data learned
Four Elements of Strategic Objectives
Writing objectives for the lessons leading up to the unit goal is as simple as A, B, C, D.
Be sure your objectives include each of the four elements described below:
1. Audience = the students (TSWBAT “The students will be able to…)
2. Behavior = a verb from the proper level of Bloom’s Taxonomy
3. Condition = pre-requisite tasks the student must complete or supplies the student
needs to accomplish the specified task
4. Degree = a minimum number of items completed to prove the students have
learned what you had planned or intended
Sample Objectives:
Read each objective and identify the audience, behavior, condition, and
degree within.
1. After reading and discussing Washington Irving’s “The Devil and Tom Walker,”
James Fennimore Cooper’s excerpt from The Prairie, William Cullen Bryant’s
“Thanatopsis,” and Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” the
students will be able to list four characteristics of American Literature during the
Romantic Period.
2. After reading and viewing To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, the students will
be able to differentiate between a character’s internal and external conflicts and
support each type with specific and relevant details from the text.
3. After listening to and reading Jonathan Edwards’ Sinners in the Hands of an
Angry God and identifying several examples of figurative language, the students
will be able to illustrate and label two images found within.
4. After reading and discussing the chapters concerning an episode in The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the students will be able to design an audiovisual project, which will illuminate the episode for those who have not read it.
5. After reading Ernest Hemmingway’s “Big Two-Hearted River” and listening to
several parodies of it, the students will be able to rewrite another short story of the
curriculum in parody form or compose an original version of a parody for “Big
Two-Hearted River” as a submission to a Hemmingway parody contest.
6. After listening to explanations of participial, gerund, and infinitive phrases, in
addition to completing worksheets on these phrases, the students should be able to
integrate these phrases into their own writing, with an 85% rate of correctness in
regard to placement and punctuation.