Before I started teaching, I never received any guidance or training on learning targets. On the first day of school, I had no clue what it was supposed to look like. I immediately reverted to what I saw my teachers do as a student. In those days, all my objectives started with “Students will be able to.” Now, that looks great on a lesson plan for admin, but it might be hard for your students to internalize. That defeats the purpose of our goal.

We want learning targets to help students understand what AND why they’re learning, right? The language we use should reflect that goal. 

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How to Write Effective Learning Targets

Let’s take an objective that you might have seen on my whiteboard in Year 1:

“Students will be able to write a summary using key details from a text.” 

I mean, it’s fine. If my principal walked in for a surprise observation, I’d earn a “check.”  But do I really believe that my students are going to look at it (if they even think to turn their heads in that direction) and go, “Oh cool, let’s do it!” Absolutely not. Let’s give it a makeover.

Step 1: Start with the standard. 

So let’s start where every strong learning target should start: the standard.

The first thing I need to do is get clear on what the standard actually calls for. Let’s take a look:

4.RC.3.RF: Summarize multi-paragraph texts, providing key details to demonstrate understanding of the central message or topic.

Note: This is an Arkansas, 4th grade ELA standard. It relates directly to a Common Core Standard and many state-specific ones. Check your specific standards to be clear on the exact language it uses.

If you’re looking at this with newbie teacher eyes, it’s easy to think, “Okay, simple. I teach a lesson on summarizing, they write a summary, and we’re done.” Meanwhile, all the vets are chuckling.

That’s because you’re making a mistake I did as a first-year teacher. You’re not thinking of the standard as the destination of a longer journey.

Let me explain. 

While this standard may look like one specific skill, it’s a ton packaged together. In order for your students to summarize a text, they have to understand the following:

• What a “central message” or topic even is
• How to determine the main idea of a text
• How to decide if something is a minor or key detail
• How paragraphs relate to each other in a text
• And other things!

So you can see…it’s a lot. Depending on your students, this could easily be a standard they’ll need a few (at least) lessons to master. 

Now, we see why creating learning targets directly from standards might not be the best course of action. On paper, this standard looks straightforward. In practice, it’s anything but—which is why the next step matters so much.

Step 2: Unpack the Standard.

Our learning target is still going to start with the standard, but we need to break it down a bit.

A simple approach is thinking about:

1. What your students will have to know
2. What your students will have to do

Think about the example I gave earlier with all those skills students need to summarize.

Think of the standard as a spectrum. The spectrum has milestones that represent the key understandings, knowledge, or skills that the standard requires. Some are prerequisites, and some are the things students will pick up along the way to full mastery. In Arkansas (my state), we have a standards progression map and a set of mastery descriptors. Resources like those help us to figure out what that spectrum (including prerequisite skills) looks like in the classroom.

I encourage you to try out this process on your own to make sure you understand it. After you get the hang of it, AI can be super helpful in streamlining the process. MagicSchool AI has a “Standards Unpacker” tool that I love. I’ll include the prompt I used in ChatGPT to break down this summarizing standard: 

You are a 4th grade English Language Arts teacher planning to teach summarizing.  Analyze the following Arkansas 4th Grade Standard for English Language Arts and identify every necessary goal students will need to meet in order to become fully proficient in this standard. AR ELA Standard: Summarize multi-paragraph texts, providing key details to demonstrate understanding of the central message or topic.

I used this post from Edutopia to help me formulate the ChatGPT prompt!

Now, when I’m really in my instructional design bag? I like to use all three methods to make sure I have everything covered.

Step 3: Creating a Game Plan

Once you understand what students need to know and do, the next question becomes obvious: how will you know they’ve actually learned it?

Assessment-First Approach

Now that we’re clear on the “what,” we need to figure out the “how.” As in, how are we going to teach the skill, and how we’re going to make sure our students have mastered it (aka *assessments*). 

First, figure out the assessment. How will you know students have actually “got it?”

The end of year state test in Arkansas directly assesses standards, so I find sample items for the focus standards. Using that insight, I design in-class assessments that align. If starting with the assessment feels a little weird, you might want to look into backwards design.

After you know how the students will demonstrate mastery, it’s time to plan what you’ll teach to get them there. Go back to your breakdown spectrum and figure out where your students currently lie on the gamut. If you don’t have a lot of knowledge of your students (maybe you’re doing this during the summer) or are otherwise unsure of their abilities, you can use:

• assessment data from previous years
• general classroom knowledge (what your students traditionally have been able to do)
• or talk to teachers in the lower grade levels.

Regardless of what you choose, I suggest starting with a pre-assessment (can be super informal) to check in with their skills. 

You should have some sort of assessment and instructional plan for each point on the spectrum. For example, I’m going to assess my students’ ability to identify the conflict of a narrative before I assess their ability to identify key details. Essentially, you’re collecting data to define (and redefine) your current location on the map.

Why Learning Targets Depend on Instructional Planning

At this point, you might be thinking…

“Maya, I thought this was going to help me write learning targets. Why are talking about lesson planning.” SO GLAD you asked! To put it simply: you can’t tell your students what they’re going to learn if you don’t know what you’re going to teach.

Yes, you could write overarching learning targets that just covered an entire standard and followed your students from novice-hood to mastery. However, when things are too general, you lose the focus. Plus, your students definitely notice when the learning target hasn’t changed. The novelty that a new learning target brings could spark some curiosity that inspires the learning process. At the very least, it shows them that today will be different than yesterday.

Using your milestones and breakdowns, you should be able to write a simple objective for each point on the map. Starting with a “Students will be able to…” model is absolutely fine! I actually prefer that model as a starting point. It’s a great base and gives me something that feels “academic” (not required at all–just a Maya quirk). 

Let’s take a look at an objective from my unpacked standard:

“Students will be able to identify the conflict in a narrative.”

It doesn’t directly correlate with a grade level, state standard, but that’s okay! I know that I am building my students’ skillset and understanding to get to that objective and standard. Also, I can include an objective tied directly to my standard in my lesson plan as a parent-objective while highlighting this particular focus objective.

Step 4: Make it Student-Friendly

The last major step of the process–and how you’re going to move from ‘objective’ to ‘learning target’–is using student-friendly language. 

One thing I want to clear up before we go any further: “student-friendly” does NOT mean “dumbed down.” Your students can (and should) see learning targets that include academic vocabulary. We just want to make the language more accessible and more engaging (not text-friendly). 

If I were to take my previous objective and make it more student-friendly, I might end up with this:

“I can identify the problem a character faces in a story.”

Let’s break this down: 

• “I can”: This places the student directly into the statement and helps them to internalize it.
• “Problem” vs. “conflict”: I try not to define terms too early if my students haven’t already gained the understanding. This is a learning target I’d use early into our narrative study. Once I have defined “conflict,” my learning targets would reflect that newly established level of understanding. 
• “Story” vs. “Narrative”: Same thing as above. Rule of thumb: ask yourself, “Would my students immediately understand what it means?”

Just for fun, let’s see what that learning target would look like for students who DO understand the terms.

“I can identify the conflict in a narrative.”

Note: it’s a good idea to familiarize your students with expository terms (like “identify”). That way, they’ll know what they mean when they come across them on major tests and assignments. That’s an example of a word I would not remove for the sake of being “student-friendly.”

Step 4.5: Make it Relevant!

At this point, your students understand the learning target. However, understanding a learning target isn’t the same as caring about it. That’s where the magic lives.

My last little tweak? Add a “so I can…” to your learning targets to make it more meaningful for your students. Why should your students care about the lesson topic? Why should it matter? 

Here’s my example with a “so I can” added:

“I can make a story more interesting by identifying the problem a character faces in a story.”

The “so I can” requires a certain level of knowledge of your students and is a great opportunity to make a lesson or skill relevant. I know a lot of my students find complex texts and novels “boring” (booooo), but if I frame the target skill as a way to make stories more interesting to read (and eventually write!), I might pique their interest in a way that’s conducive to higher engagement. Play around with different angles and phrasing to ensure the flow stays intact.

Also, it’s obvious from the example, but the “so I can” doesn’t always follow a “so I can..,” structure. The function of the phrase remains the same, though.

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To Sum Up Writing Effective Learning Targets

And there we have it! We went from a stale, (loaded) objective to a student-friendly version that actually helps them understand what they’ll be learning.

Writing strong learning targets isn’t about perfect wording or checking a box for admin. It’s about clarity…for you and your students.

When learning targets are thoughtfully written, they give lessons purpose. They help students understand what they’re working toward, why it matters, and what success actually looks like. And when that clarity is missing, no amount of redirection, reminders, or behavior systems can fully make up for it.

The goal isn’t to make learning targets longer or more complicated. It’s to make them more intentional. Targets that reflect the standard, anticipate student needs, and are written in language students can actually access do real instructional work. They also:

• reduce confusion
• improve the quality of student
• make it easier for students to stay focused since they know what they’re supposed to be doing.

And once you’re confident writing learning targets, the next step is learning how to use them consistently in class (not just post them and forget about them) with routines that let students interact with them, reference them, and use them to guide their work. Click here to read exactly how to do that and improve classroom management in the process!