While preparing a lesson plan, which step comes first?

Lesson planning follows an outcomes-first instructional design sequence: a lesson is planned by first stating what learners must achieve, the learning objectives, because every later decision, such as the teaching aids selected, the classroom activities designed, and the criteria used for evaluation, is derived from those stated objectives.

Applying this to the given options: identifying learning objectives is the step that must be completed before the others, because teaching aids are chosen to support a given objective, classroom activities are designed to help learners reach that objective, and evaluation is designed to measure whether the objective was achieved. Hence, identifying learning objectives is the first step in preparing a lesson plan.

Checking each option against this sequence:

• Selecting teaching aids: aids and materials are chosen to match a content or skill target that must already be defined; without a stated objective there is no basis for choosing one aid over another.

• Conducting classroom activities: activities put the plan into action during delivery, built around content and methods that were already decided in light of the objective.

• Evaluating students' performance: evaluation measures the extent to which the objective set for the lesson was achieved, so the objective must exist before it can be evaluated against.

Therefore, among the four steps, identifying learning objectives is the one step that necessarily precedes the rest, making it the first step of lesson planning.