The Importance of Learning Targets

A learning target or what is called an objective, specifies what you would like your students to achieve at the end of an instruction. It emphasizes that the goal of teaching involves more than covering the material and keeping students actively engaged. The teacher should make sure to specify the objectives or the learning targets since they guide the teaching-learning process and they make things clearer for teachers, students and parents and they help students to achieve better.

Reasons for using specific learning targets:

1- They make goals explicit.

2-They communicate intent of instruction to students, teachers and parents.

3- They provide the basis of teaching.

4- They describe specific performances that will be evaluated.

5- They make it easier to individualize instructions.

6- They help teachers focus their assessment and evaluations. 

 Kinds of objectives:

1- Cognitive objectives: are at the level of cognitive and thinking skills of students.

2- Affective objectives: are at the level of values and attitudes of students.

3- Psychomotor objectives: are at the level of motor skills of students.