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WRITING MEASURABLE OBJECTIVES �MODULE 2 OF 2

Personalized Learning Power-Up

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State Standards & Objectives

Step 1: Locate the state standard

  • Learning objectives should be clearly connected to the College and Career Ready and/or AZ Early Learning Standards and can be located at: https://www.azed.gov/ .

Step 2: How to Write Measurable Learning Objectives

  • Objectives include detailed descriptions of what students will be able to do by the end of a lesson.
    • They are specific, observable and measurable
    • They are related to the standard and intended outcome

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Objectives

Writing Objectives – A learning objective contains four major components:

  1. The audience (who are your learners).
  2. The behavior or skill (this component should contain an action verb relevant to the domain of the activity). It is important that this is measurable. Words such as “know”, “learn” or “understand” is not measurable. Instead, focus on words that you could create an assessment tool that can measure whether a student can “identify”, “list”, “define”, “explain”, etc.
  3. The conditions under which the student will perform the skill/demonstrate the knowledge.
  4. The degree used to measure mastery.

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Bloom’s Taxonomy

  • Bloom’s Taxonomy was created by a group of psychologists as a tool for the organization and categorization of different levels of learnings.
  • When writing objectives, an introductory lesson may be completely at the comprehension or application level.
  • However, as a unit of study evolves, the objectives need to be moving more towards the evaluation level of thinking.

*See image for verbs to help create specific, measurable objectives

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Bloom’s Taxonomy

List of commonly used verbs:

Remembering: can the student recall or remember the information?

define, locate, spell, identify, tell, label, name, duplicate, list, memorize, recall, repeat, state

Understanding: can the student explain ideas or concepts?

classify, describe, convert, restate, summarize, discuss, explain, identify, locate, recognize, report, select, translate, paraphrase

Applying: can the student use the information in a new way?

choose, demonstrate, dramatize, apply, determine, make, show, construct, employ, illustrate, interpret, operate, schedule, sketch, solve, use, write.

Analyzing: can the student distinguish between the different parts?

appraise, compare, debate, examine, contrast, criticize, differentiate, discriminate, analyze, distinguish, examine, experiment, question, test.

Evaluating: can the student justify a stand or decision?

appraise, choose, compare, rate, argue, defend, judge, select, support, value, evaluate

Creating: can the student create new product or point of view?

assemble, construct, predict, rearrange, create, design, develop, formulate, write.

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Assessment of Objectives

Assessment of Objectives:

Objectives are directly tied to assessment in that the behavior expressed as an action verb suggests what form of appropriate assessment might take.

*Examples: describe might be assessed with a short answer question; name might be assessed with a fill in the blank question, identify might be assessed by a multiple-choice question or having students circle representative examples of a concept, solve might be assessed by having students find the solutions to mathematical problems, create or evaluate might be assessed with a scoring guide, etc.

Use of words like understand and learn in writing objectives are generally not acceptable as they are difficult to measure.

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A.B.C.D. of Writing Learning Objectives

View the below video on how to write measurable learning objectives:

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APPLICATION ACTIVITY

Complete the Power-Up Writing Learning Objectives Activity