This article examines the extent to which classroom instruction conveyed challenging learning goals in writing through a range of teaching activities and how well the participating students understood those goals. We report an empirical study that examined the quality of writing instructional goals, how well they were conveyed to students through lesson activities and how the students came to understand them. Two different but converging theoretical perspectives of self-regulated learning and formative assessment were used as an analytical framework. Teachers' instructional practices during writing lessons were audio-taped in 17 different classrooms and a sample of students subsequently interviewed to assess their understanding of the dimensions of interest. The conditions monitored included the extent to which the lesson aims and mastery criteria were made explicit and how well feedback was aligned to those lesson aims. In most classes, students' interview responses reflected the extent to which teachers were explicit in these aspects of instructional practice. In general, when lesson aims and mastery criteria were unclear, students identified surface features of writing as their learning aims. When these lesson attributes were clearly articulated by the teacher, students were able to identify deeper features of writing as the lesson aims. When the aims were clear but the mastery criteria and lesson activities were misaligned, however, students identified surface features of writing as the lesson aims, rather than those articulated by the teacher. (Contains 3 tables.)