From Learning Objectives to Assessment: A Lesson Plan Guide for Textbook Authors
Consider a book whose chapters are well organized, whose examples become progressively harder, and whose text is error-free. Yet after two sessions, the teacher does not know what to expect from the student by the end of the chapter. The problem is usually not the writing; it is the absence of a lesson plan. A lesson plan is not an administrative document for filling out the class register; it is a map that clarifies the destination before the first sentence of the chapter is written.
Every author of an educational book, even if they have never stood at a blackboard, must make the decisions of an instructional designer: what to teach, in what order to proceed, and how to know that the reader has learned. These decisions begin with the objective and end with assessment.
Write the Objective with an Observable Verb, Not a Vague Noun
Robert Mager in Preparing Instructional Objectives (1962) showed that many educational objectives remain unmeasurable because of ambiguity in the verb. He proposed three components for a sound behavioral objective:
- Performance: What does the reader do at the end that can be seen or heard?
- Condition: With what tools, what data, and in what situation do they do it?
- Criterion: What level of accuracy, speed, or independence is acceptable?
“Familiarity with Newton’s laws” is not an objective; it is a wish. By contrast, “the reader can calculate the acceleration of an object in two out of three problems by drawing a force diagram” is both a guide for writing and a criterion for assessment.
The level of the objective is equally important. Bloom’s taxonomy (1956) and the Anderson and Krathwohl revision (2001) chart a spectrum from “remembering” to “creating.” Many books claim to bring the reader to analysis and evaluation, but their end-of-chapter questions only retest definitions. This mismatch is the result of not having a lesson plan, not of the author’s weakness in sentence construction.
Backward Design: Write the Assessment Before the Text
Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe in Understanding by Design (1998) reversed the design process: first determine what understanding you expect at the end, then identify acceptable evidence for that understanding, and finally arrange the learning experiences. Ralph Tyler had earlier, in Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction (1949), presented this same logic in the form of fundamental planning questions.
The application of this idea for a book author is simple: before writing the chapter, write its final question. If you cannot design a fair question that matches the objective, the chapter probably does not yet have a clear objective. This five-minute exercise saves hours of rewriting.
From Lesson Plan to Chapter Architecture
Robert Gagné in The Conditions of Learning enumerated nine instructional events, from gaining attention and informing learners of the objective to providing feedback and enhancing retention. These events can be translated directly into the structure of a chapter:
| Lesson Plan Element | Equivalent in the Book | Example Implementation |
|---|---|---|
| Behavioral objective | The sentence “By the end of this chapter, you can…” | Calculating compound interest on a real loan |
| Gaining attention | Opening section with a concrete problem | Installment purchase scenario |
| Recalling prerequisites | “What you have read before” box | Review of percentages and exponents |
| Presentation and guidance | Explanatory text with a worked example | Step-by-step example with marginal notes |
| Independent practice | Tiered exercises at the end of the section | Five basic exercises, two challenge exercises |
| Summary | Chapter summary and concept map | List of key points |
| Assessment | Review questions and final project | Developing a budget table for a project |
None of these elements is decorative. A chapter that does not begin with a real problem has omitted the event of gaining attention; a chapter without tiered exercises has deprived the reader of the opportunity for independent practice.
Assessment: Assessment for Learning or Assessment of Learning?
Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam showed in their article “Inside the Black Box” (1998) that formative assessment, when carried out during learning, is more effective than many instructional interventions. The difference between these two types of assessment lies in their timing and function: formative assessment corrects the path, while summative assessment records the result.
Assessment builds learning when it describes the gap between what the reader has done and what the goal was in clear, actionable language; a grade alone does not close that gap.
In the book, formative tools have a defined place: mid-chapter questions, an explanatory answer key that does not give only the final number, and scoring rubrics for projects. Summative assessment must also align with the objectives stated at the beginning of the chapter; otherwise the reader feels deceived.
Exercises: Where Reading Meets Doing
John Sweller (1988) showed that excessive cognitive load halts a novice’s learning. The well-known solution to this problem is the worked-example effect: after a complete example, provide a partially completed problem with only a few steps left blank, followed by an independent problem. In lesson planning, this sequence is called “guided practice” and “independent practice,” and without it, end-of-chapter exercises benefit only those who already know how to do them.
Conclusion
A lesson plan, before it is a document for the class, is a tool for the author. If you write the objective with an observable verb, first determine the evidence of learning, and then arrange the content, the book’s chapters will take shape on their own. Assessment is also no longer an end-of-chapter appendix; it is the starting point of design. Before submitting the manuscript to an editor, a short review is enough: Does every objective have an observable verb? Has evidence been considered for every objective? Do the end-of-chapter questions assess the same level stated in the objective? An honest answer to these three questions closes the gap between a readable book and a book that teaches.
