Category: Education

A learning objective is a clear statement that describes what the learner will attain or apply from a lesson. Writing learning objectives is important for any lesson-planning process. The well-written learning objectives help students to understand what they will learn after completing the course or session.

Learning objectives assist to focus the learning process and provide a clear framework for assessment. It ensures that the learning activities are aligned with the goals of the lesson or course. After defining the specific skills or knowledge that learners are going to acquire, instructors can prepare the appropriate content for the course.

This article will take you through the importance of learning objectives and the ways to write them perfectly.

Why Effective Learning Objectives Are Important?

Well-written learning objectives are important for many reasons such as;

Clear Roadmap for Students

Learning objectives provide a clear picture of the course to the students shortly what they will learn from the lesson. This shows how it’s well-aligned with the goals of the course. It inspires and motivates the participants on achieving those outcomes. This also helps them understand how they will be assessed.

Compass for Teachers

Good learning objectives help teachers and instructors to design the right course contents and strategies that cope with the learning objectives. This aids them to make a fair assessment plan too.  Learning the importance of observation is just as essential.

Things to Consider Before You Write the Learning Objectives

A good teacher or course instructor always thinks a lot before designing the learning objectives. Some of the questions that they might ask themselves for writing beneficial learning objectives are;

• What will the students or participants attain after attending this course, or lesson?
• What do the participants need to know and how it will bridge their existing knowledge and skills with what they are going to achieve?
• How do participants apply the knowledge and skills that they will learn?

Step-by-Step Guide to Write Learning Objectives

The effective learning objective should be specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). If you are a teacher or want to be so, you can follow the steps below to write the learning objectives perfectly.

Step 1: Clear Statement

Write each learning objective in a clear statement of what the attendees will know after participating in the lesson. For example, you can start with the phrase “After completing this session, the learner will be able to …..”

• Be sure to include the necessary context and conditions for the learning objective.
• The objectives should describe what the attendees will learn or do as a result of a learning experience.
• Keep the learning objective concise and student-focused. Avoid using vague or broad language.

Step 2: Use Most Suitable Action Verb

Choose the right action verbs that are specific, measurable, and descriptive. This makes the objective clearer and more focused. For writing learning objectives, it’s recommended to follow Benjamin Bloom’s Taxonomy (1956).

Bloom’s hierarchical classification explains six different levels of thinking: Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, and Create. AAMC.org enlisted some verbs to formulate educational objectives.

Step 3: Break Down the Tasks and Cognitive Skills

Sometimes faculty think the lesson or task requires specific skills but in reality, it needs a blend of many component skills. To master these skills, students have to practice a lot. The course instructor should mention all the necessary skills so participants get the right direction at the very beginning.

Step 4: Review Each Objective

Double-check the learning objective to ensure that it matches the overall goals and objectives of the course or lesson. It should be closely related to the content and activities that will be covered in the lesson.

Learning Objective Examples

A learning objective for a science lesson on plant biology might be: “After completing this session, the learner will be able to identify the different parts of a plant and their functions, using a diagram or a real plant as a reference.”

This objective is specific (identifying the parts of a plant), measurable (using a diagram or a real plant), attainable (assuming the learner has some prior knowledge of plant biology), relevant (to the topic of plant biology), and time-bound (able to do this after completing the lesson).  So, it meets the SMART formula hence the learning objective is absolutely accurate.

But if you use “learn” instead of “identify” the learning objective will be wrong as the word “learn” is not measurable.

Conclusion

Learning objectives are crucial components of any educational program or lesson plan. They help to ensure that the content and activities of a lesson are focused, relevant, and aligned with the course’s or program’s overall goals and objectives.

The well-written learning objectives will help to design the content that copes with the learning programs and assessment process. We describe here the steps to make effective learning objectives. Hopefully, you can now write the learning objectives perfectly.

Visual content has grown increasingly significant in all aspects of human life in the contemporary era. Because 65 percent of individuals learn best through visuals, they are vital for eLearning courses. By diving into important statistics and facts, this will investigate why students prefer visual learning when studying.

Memory For Visuals Tends To Be Quite Robust

Associating ideas with concrete visuals is a simple but effective strategy for helping students remember what they’ve learned. Students are more likely to retain information presented visually because they are able to make more sense of it and focus more intently on it. Studies have shown that after three days, people only remember 10% to 20% of what they read or hear, but they recall over 65% of what they see.

Visuals Are Far More Efficient At Conveying Meaning Than Words

Having the data laid out in bullet points makes them much easier to read and absorb. The same data, presented as a picture or video, is processed much more rapidly. Our eyes can detect 36,000 visual signals every hour, while the brain can process pictures lasting just 13 milliseconds, as reported by Visual Teaching Alliance. Within a tenth of a second, our brains can process enough visual information to form an overall impression of a situation. Images can be processed 60,000 times faster than words by the human brain.  Since visual learning is so important to them, osmosis is one of the best online learning platform for medicine currently available.

Stimulates Students’ Curiosity

Have you ever noticed how much more engaging a lecture gets when the speaker incorporates a humorous image onto the board? Text-only classroom lectures might be dull for some students. Studying using visuals can be a lot of fun and a really intriguing experience. Including images in your notes is one way to make even the most boring lectures more interesting. Using visual aids such as pictures, colors, and sketches helps learners stay interested and concentrated.

Improve Your Capacity For Higher-Level Reasoning

When dealing with complex or text-heavy subjects, visual aids like diagrams and infographics can be invaluable. Including images in notes helps us retain information because it engages our imagination. In addition, when we put our minds to the task of translating words into pictures, we exercise our higher-order cognitive processes.

Visuals Can Facilitate Faster Learning

According to research, seeing something helps our brain digest it more quickly than reading words. It’s easier and quicker to absorb data presented in visual formats like flowcharts, graphs, symbols, etc. Having something to look at may help us remember and understand concepts more thoroughly. Visuals like pictures are kept in our long-term memory, although our short-term memory can only hold a tiny amount of information. Words are difficult to recall because they are abstract and complicated, and our brains are wired to prefer pictures. Consider how quickly your mind can conjure up a logo for any brand, even before you can remember the name of the brand itself.

The Bottom Line

A visual system is a powerful tool for education. Most individuals can recall any information presented to them in a visual style. Do you learn best by reading about something, or would you rather have it demonstrated in an image or video? Since pictures are more appealing than written information, most individuals would choose the latter option.

The Ultimate Guide to Easily Make Instructional Videos

Almost all students have a least one subject that they consider to be their least favorite. While this subject will vary from student to student, the one that most kids tend to hate is math. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Math is one of the more difficult subjects early on in school, and it doesn’t really get easier.

However, the difficulty isn’t the only reason students struggle with math, in particular. There are usually other explanations as to why this is. In this article, we will go over those reasons so that you can better adapt your teaching strategy to account for them.

Learning Disabilities

One thing that many schools have become much better about these days is acknowledging any learning disabilities a student might have and making adjustments for them. Things such as autism or ADD/ADHD are well-known problems that can make learning math more difficult for some students, but dyslexia is another one.

Most of the time, dyslexia makes reading more difficult for children, but it can also happen with numbers. In fact, some students might only have dyslexia with numerical values and not letters, making it harder to detect. Regardless of what learning disabilities, your students may face, changing the way you teach to accommodate them is crucial for their success.

Lack of Patience or Concentration

Not all mental struggles come from learning disabilities, though. Many young children struggle with common concepts such as patience and concentration. Kids can work on and develop these traits as they get older, but in the meantime, they will struggle with their math studies if they lack either of them.

That means, on top of finding new ways to help your students master math, you should also figure out how to help them improve these traits. Not every day needs to be a math lesson. Taking the time to help students develop their patience and concentration will go a long way.

Left-Brain vs. Right-Brain

Of course, one of the more well-known reasons why some students struggle with math is because they are right-brained people. Those who use more right-brained thinking are those who are creative and expressive. Math is very straight to the point and analytical, something that comes more naturally to left-brained individuals.

In order to combat this, you should try to find ways to inject creativity into your lessons. Maybe you design a project around a complex topic or come up with problems that are more stimulating to right-brained people. The choice is up to you.

Math Anxiety

Finally, we have math anxiety. Sometimes, the thought of having to do math will stress kids, teens, and even adults out and cause them to struggle even more than before. This problem can be made worse by all of the previously mentioned difficulties. It can also be hard to identify, but once you know how to recognize and overcome math anxiety, you will be able to help a lot of students do much better with this troublesome subject.

If you are looking to introduce your children to the world of books, there are few ages sooner to do so than when they are still in kindergarten. Even if you know that you want to start your kids on books, you may be confounded about which books are best for them.

To that end, we have provided several examples of a kindergarten read aloud lesson plan that accounts for length, wordiness, and their ability to grab kids’ attention.

“Mae Among the Stars” by Roda Ahmed

This is the story of a girl named Mae. Mae dreams about dancing around high up in outer space, surrounded by glimmering stars as she moves about the cosmos and learns more and more about it. She soon realizes that she wants to be an astronaut when she grows up. Upon hearing the aspirations of young Mae, her mother encourages her by saying it could happen if she truly believed it will and she works hard to achieve it. Mae’s willingness to learn, dedication, and intellect plus her parents’ encouragement help the young girl rise through education, join NASA, and eventually earn the unique claim of being the first African-American astronaut.

“Leo: A Ghost Story” by Mac Barnett

Leo is a quirky little boy who enjoys drawing pictures and making snacks. Leo also happens to be a ghost, which makes it impossible for most people to ever notice him. After a new family moves into his home and his few gestures as welcoming the new tenants are all grossly misunderstood, Leo considers moving on to see the rest of what the world can offer. It is during this moment of crisis that Leo meets the super-imaginative Jane. Jane can somehow see Leo and wants him to serve her as a knight. The two strike up a friendship that serves as the start of a true adventure.

“The Day The Crayons Quit” by Drew Daywalt

Duncan is a little boy who is in the mood to do some coloring. Unfortunately, the moment he opens his crayon box he only finds several letters with the same message. Each of his crayons is fed up and has decided to quit being used for coloring. The blue crayon is worn out from being used to color water, the black crayon feels underused since Duncan only uses it for drawing outlines and the yellow and orange crayons are feuding because each believes its color to be the true color of the sun. This book illustrates what a person can do to ease tensions between different individuals and restore their interest in what they are best suited for.

“Waiting Is Not Easy” by Mo Willems

This exemplary book for introducing kindergarteners to books is the perfect choice for any little one that has trouble sitting still. The book is just bombastic, humorous, and easily legible enough to keep the little ones invested in a story about dealing with friendship and properly exercising patience and extolling the merits of doing so. Furthermore, the story is appealing enough that most kids will appreciate rereading it or having it read to them on multiple occasions.

“Friends Stick Together” by Hannah Harrison

Rupert is a kind, upstanding rhino. Levi is a rambunctious, uncouth tickbird. Rupert grows frustrated with Levi’s coarse behavior and antics in school and his frustration only grows upon learning that Levi plans to make himself the best friend to Rupert. The one thing Rupert wants to happen is for Levi to go away. Soon, Levi finally leaves Rupert alone but the rhino soon feels like things have gotten considerably more dull and boring without the brusque bird to keep classes lively. This is a great story for encouraging children to value and respect other kids with wildly different behaviors.

The Last Page

Well, that covers a handful of choice selections to start stocking your kindergartener’s library shelves with. Each of these books is an ideal piece of youth literature because the text is simple and large enough to process.  Both the stories and their illustrations are wild and entertaining enough to keep children invested without overwhelming them. After exposing your kids to one of these stories, they will love them enough to give you time to get more to read.

Educational Books for Kids | How to Choose the Right Ones for Early Learning