Welcome Guest. Sign in or Signup

4 Answers

CFI, CFII lesson plans

Asked by: 10046 views Flight Instructor, Instrument Rating

My friend gave me the whole binder to me and i am wondering I am going to use them or make my own notes. He pretty much has everything covered according to PTS, some of them are missing but I am already working on. I triedy to download and print out missing relevant Advisory circular to fulfill PTS requirement.

I think this pretty much saves time since I am a full-time student in university, and I want your two cents on using friend's CFI, CFII binder.

 

Ace Any FAA Written Test!
Actual FAA Questions / Free Lifetime Updates
The best explanations in the business
Fast, efficient study.
Pass Your Checkride With Confidence!
FAA Practical Test prep that reflects actual checkrides.
Any checkride: Airplane, Helicopter, Glider, etc.
Written and maintained by actual pilot examiners and master CFIs.
The World's Most Trusted eLogbook
Be Organized, Current, Professional, and Safe.
Highly customizable - for student pilots through pros.
Free Transition Service for users of other eLogs.
Our sincere thanks to pilots such as yourself who support AskACFI while helping themselves by using the awesome PC, Mac, iPhone/iPad, and Android aviation apps of our sponsors.

4 Answers



  1. Kris Kortokrax on Mar 21, 2015

    If your friend gave his set of lesson plans to you, then it seems that he does not understand the reason for lesson plans. They are not an aid to passing a practical test. They are a necessity for future teaching activity. If he no longer has a set of lesson plans, how does he plan to go about teaching?

    As to your using lesson plans that you have not developed, there is no prohibition concerning it. However, you should be able to construct an acceptable lesson plan yourself, if asked.

    Information from ACs and Handbooks and other reference material should be referenced in a lesson plan, not included. The reference material changes from time to time. If you include info from an item that has changed, you will be teaching non-current (wrong) information.

    +5 Votes Thumb up 6 Votes Thumb down 1 Votes



  2. Russ Roslewski on Mar 24, 2015

    One of the primary goals of CFI training is to learn to be a teacher. Part of that involves learning what goes into an effective lesson, and the thought process you go through to make sure everything is in a logical format is very important to learn.

    It’s possible that after you finish your CFI training, you may never use the lesson plans you’ve developed yourself. However, the experience and practice of actually putting thought into it and developing an effective plan is extremely important and valuable. You will have to answer many questions for yourself when developing them (for aerodynamics, do you want to discuss AOA first, or Bernoulli? Why? For airspace, VFR cloud clearance or speed restrictions first? Why? Which way makes it easier to understand? Etc.)

    Personally, I developed many different lesson plans in my CFI training. Few of them I use anymore, instead I will use (typically) the Jeppesen products. However, for some lessons I like the format and flow of mine better (such as for airspace) so I still use them.

    You’ll be missing that important process if you just use your friend’s plans.

    +4 Votes Thumb up 4 Votes Thumb down 0 Votes



  3. Mark Kolber on Mar 25, 2015

    I doubt it was intended by either Kris or Russ, but reading their responses might lead one to think one should create his own lesson plans for everything. As both say the goal is to learn how to put a lesson together. To have one think about the elements that go into one. To be able to create a lesson plan from scratch when a new subject comes up (seen any canned lesson plans on using an iPad EFB?)

    The best way to accomplish that is to create some on your own to learn the process. Not the whole binder – a new CFI doesn’t need to re-create the wheel made by decades of experience from Jepp, Gleim, Sportys, etc – but at least some.

    +1 Votes Thumb up 1 Votes Thumb down 0 Votes



  4. Russ Roslewski on Mar 25, 2015

    Yes, Mark, thanks for the clarification.

    It’s important that you learn how to develop lesson plans, but you can’t develop one for every single topic.

    The topics I do recommend you develop are the “hard” ones and the “common” ones. So, for ground topics, two big ones are aerodynamics and airspace. The examiner is very likely to ask you about both of these anyway, so you need to know them (and how to present them) very well. Aerodynamics is a good one because of course it gets into AOA/stall/spin discussion and makes you stretch your mind over the “physics” part of flying. Airspace is a good one just because there’s SO MUCH to cover that it really forces you to establish a good flow and structure – cloud clearance/vis, equipment requirements, speed limits, clearances, altitudes, how they look on the chart, SUA, on and on. The sheer quantity of material requires a good hard evaluation of the structure of the lesson(s).

    And then there’s the other end – mostly for the flying portion. You really should develop lesson plans yourself for the common maneuvers. Stalls (especially since you can tie it into your aerodynamics lesson), steep turns, pattern work, landings, that sort of thing. This isn’t particularly hard, and much of it may come out of the AFH, but that way you’ve thought through them thoroughly before you have to present them.

    The practice really is invaluable and will pay dividends for the rest of your CFI career.

    As an actual example, I just last night conducted a ground school for members of a flying club that recently acquired a Piper Turbo Saratoga. No sort of pre-canned lesson plan could possibly have existed to meet the specific needs here. The training was conducted as “differences training” between the new airplane and the Cessnas they already had in the club, so the lesson had to be built completely from scratch based on the equipment/performance/avionics/airframes they were used to. It went really well, I think largely in part because I forced myself to develop my own lesson plans back in my CFI training days and consider how information would best fit together for maximum learning.

    +1 Votes Thumb up 1 Votes Thumb down 0 Votes


Answer Question

Our sincere thanks to all who contribute constructively to this forum in answering flight training questions. If you are a flight instructor or represent a flight school / FBO offering flight instruction, you are welcome to include links to your site and related contact information as it pertains to offering local flight instruction in a specific geographic area. Additionally, direct links to FAA and related official government sources of information are welcome. However we thank you for your understanding that links to other sites or text that may be construed as explicit or implicit advertising of other business, sites, or goods/services are not permitted even if such links nominally are relevant to the question asked.