Why is aligning the objectives to the standards important

Assessments should reveal how well students have learned what we want them to learn while instruction ensures that they learn it. For this to occur, assessments, learning objectives, and instructional strategies need to be closely aligned so that they reinforce one another. To ensure that these three components of your course are aligned, ask yourself the following questions:. If assessments are misaligned with learning objectives or instructional strategies, it can undermine both student motivation and learning.

Consider these two scenarios:. Your objective is for students to learn to apply analytical skills , but your assessment measures only factual recall. Consequently, students hone their analytical skills and are frustrated that the exam does not measure what they learned. Consequently, students do not learn or practice the skills of comparison and evaluation that will be assessed.

Objective test items such as fill-in-the-blank, matching, labeling, or multiple-choice questions that require students to:. Within the objective, we have included the "what" and the "how. When we post this objective for the students, we are letting them know the task at hand and that it is important enough to post. We have also included multiple levels of Bloom's Taxonomy , which is important to ensure that our students are critical thinkers. So here is the challenge.

Take the standards below and create objectives for your classroom. Choose a grade level, or several grade levels. The standards are listed by grade levels and are taken directly from the Common Core Standards. Kindergarten: Correctly name shapes regardless of their orientations or overall size. Grade 1: Partition circles and rectangles into two and four equal shares, describe the shares using the words halves, fourths and quarters, and use the phrases half of, fourth of and quarter of.

Describe the whole as two of, or four of the shares. Understand for these examples that decomposing into more equal shares creates smaller shares.

Grade 2: Recognize and draw shapes having specified attributes, such as a given number of angles or a given number of equal faces. Learning objectives also guide instructors to align critical course components, such as student assessments, instructional materials, course activities, and course technology.

When aligned, the major course components work together to ensure that students achieve the desired learning objectives. In an online course especially, objectives help instructors guide their choices about the content that needs to be included—what is truly important versus what is just nice to have. Also ask: What is the one thing this week that you really want students to learn and be able to apply? Recall that the objectives, materials, activities, and assessments should all align to ensure that this one thing is learned and applied by the students.