Review your school's standards. Your objectives will almost always relate to these standards. There are, however, rare exceptions. For example, if you are teaching a low-performing class, they might need to master a standard from a lower grade level before attempting grade-level standards, while if you are teaching a gifted class, they might need additional enrichment because they have already mastered the standards.
Study the material you will teach in your lesson to see how you can relate it to your standards. For some subjects, this is straightforward; if the next chapter in your science textbook is about identifying types of magnets and one of your standards relates to magnets, you can easily pair the two. However, it might be more difficult for other subjects, particularly if you are teaching a novel in a reading class. In that case, you will have to review the material more carefully to see how it relates to the standards. For instance, a chapter in which a character learns about herself would lend itself to a standard about character development.
Break complex standards down into steps. If the standard is "Write research papers that demonstrate knowledge of a subject area," you will have to teach the students about research skills, including how to find information in a library and online and how to differentiate between reliable and unreliable sources; avoiding plagiarism, including how to cite information correctly and how to paraphrase ideas that are not their own; and the steps of the writing process, including prewriting, drafting and revising.
Write "Students will be able to . . ." All of your objectives should begin this way. By the end of your lesson, students should be able to do something they could not do before the lesson began.
Study Bloom's taxonomy or a similar list of verbs related to the learning process. This will provide you with a list of actionable verbs describing ways in which students can show their knowledge, such as "analyze," "predict," "describe" and "contrast." Avoid abstract verbs such as "learn," "celebrate," "understand" or "appreciate." You cannot gauge whether students "learn" a subject unless they demonstrate their understanding in a concrete way.
Determine what you want the students to do to demonstrate their knowledge of the first step of the standard, using your list of verbs as a basis. For instance, if you are teaching the students about the scientific method, the first step might be to list the steps of the scientific method or to explain why the scientific method is important.
Complete your "Students will be able to . . ." sentence with the verb you chose and the activity you wish students to complete. Use simple, student-friendly language. Don't say "Students will be able to identify significant features on a map" if you are teaching first-graders. Instead, say "Students will be able to identify important parts of a map."