Your initial list of ideas, and your thinking about focus questions should help to create a list or set of intended learning outcomes, or learning objectives. Intended learning outcomes are statements of what you want the students to learn. These statements can include skills, concepts, propositions, attitudes, feelings, and values.
The process of identifying learning objectives should begin with a consideration of your initial list of ideas from the brainstorming session. Learning objectives are skills, concepts, and values that you intend the students to learn. They are not activities, or things the students will do. If you have a favorite activity or field trip, consider what the students will learn from the experience to derive an intended learning outcome. Dominant and recessive genes, chromosomes, blood vessel, hallucinogen, psychological dependence, precambrian age, fossil, and cell wall are examples of science content that you might want students to learn. Computer keyboarding, focusing a microscope, how to measure temperature of the air, calculating averages, graphing data are examples of skills you might want students learn. Your list of intended learning outcomes can also include attitudes and values such as care for animals and plants, respect for the environment, and concern for the effects of research studies on the community.
Examine your initial list of ideas, and decide which items are intended learning outcomes. Here is our original list. Those with a check mark represent, in our opinion, our classification of intended learning outcomes.