3) What is the difference between content standards and lesson objectives?

Question

3) What is the difference between content standards and lesson objectives?

Answer 1

Content standards are usually state driven - what is required by the state for all children to have been taught.  Sometimes they are called Grade Level Content Expectations or Benchmarks.

Lesson objectives are the specific outcomes you are hoping to achieve in the lesson that is being taught at that specific time.

For example, one of my Content Standards is:

Know and use common units of measurements in length, weight, and time.

A lesson objective for one of the lessons that help meet this Standard would be that children will understand how to find the length of their desk.  (That shows that they will know what a unit of measure is and know how to measure length.)

Hope that helps!

Answer 2

Hi there,

Great question! Content standards (as Love2Teach...stated) are usually state driven by curriculum standards determined by professionals in the field that in many cases are endorsed or even mandated by legislation (at least in FL). These are what guide your lesson objectives for the year. For example, we have a set of science standards in the state of FL for all science curriculum, developed for primary and secondary. Then each course, say Chemistry, has standards specifically within those standards, called benchmarks. When I do my lesson objectives for the year, they match what is required by those benchmarks of what students should learn in a Chem I course.  Your objectives match the curriculum mandated by the state content standards.   :)

Answer 3

I think you are using overlapping terms.

Content consists of facts and skills.  Facts are knowledge and concepts.  Skills are actions, such as addition, division, etc.

When you say content standards, I think you mean performance standards which can include both facts and skills (the what and the how).

In my state we call them performance standards since they require facts (content) and skills.

Lesson objectives are specific goals to help students meet the standards.  For example, students learning to spell (a skill) must have knowledge of letters and sounds.

It's a bit confusing, so I hope this makes it clearer.