ABSTRACT
When I was a high school teacher in Oregon some time ago my fellow teachers and I at Heppner High School organized our lessons around goals or objectives. These goals or objectives simply identified the skills or knowledge we wanted our students to learn. Goals were more general statements of our instructional intentions-for instance: “Students will understand how our nation’s government functions.” Objectives were more specific statements of our instructional intentions, such as: “Students will be able to describe the steps that must be followed if a federal bill is to become a law.” In plain talk, goals and objectives, at that time, identified what we wanted our students to learn.
