Creating Instructional Objectives: A Chapter from Where Great Teaching Begins: Planning for Student Thinking and Learning

In order to create great lessons, a teacher needs to know the curriculum, know the lesson content, know the students, and know how to set objectives that will engage these students as thinkers and put them on the path to learning. In this excerpt from Where Great Teaching Begins, Anne R. Reeves introduces and illustrates a step-by-step process for analyzing complex academic standards—like those in the Common Core—and translating them into lesson objectives that are specific and learner-focused, describe learning outcomes rather than activities, and engage higher-order thinking skills.