Lesson Plan

Making lesson plans is something that new flight instructors struggle with, and often encounter difficulty on

during the oral portion of their CFI checkride.  Many people say the hardest part of the CFI checkride is

making it out to the ramp and getting into the airplane!  I used to have trouble with this too, but after decades

of flight instruction and many, many checkrides it’s really not too hard.  Remember, anything is easy if you know 

how, and that’s what I’m going to teach you now.  :-)

Let’s look at what they teach reporters, on how to write a good, informative newspaper article.  It should

contain Who / What / Where / When / Why and How.  If we file the serial numbers off that, we can use it

as the framework for a pretty good lesson plan, because both have the same purpose.

Say we want to make a lesson plan for (e.g.) Steep Turns.  This is what you could present on a white board

to a student (or DPE, role-playing as student during the oral portion of the CFI checkride):

What        (Objective)

     Steep Turn - define

Why        (Motivation)

     Develop Pilot Skill

     ACS Task

How         (Content)

     Briefing Card

Common Errors

     Pitch illusions from nose high (left turn) / nose low (right turn) (viewed from the left seat)

     Not maintaining correct bank angle

     Ball not in center

     Not relaxing pull/power at end, resulting in popping up when rolling out

Completion Standards.  (Close the loop)

     Objective numbers from ACS (eg private vs commercial)

Note we have a magic thing called a Briefing Card in the “How” above.   Don’t panic. I strongly suggest that for each 

maneuver in the Flight Instructor ACS, that you develop a Briefing Card.  Remember your grandmother had a collection of

4”x6” recipe cards, for each dish that she could make?  See, your grandmother was a wonderful lady, I’m sure, but she

couldn’t possibly remember the details of how to make every possible dish.   I am like your grandmother, except that I not 

a wonderful old lady.  There is no way in Hell I can remember the details of exactly how to precisely fly every maneuver in 

the ACS.   So, for each ACS maneuver, I suggest you develop a Briefing Card which describes exactly how to fly the 

maneuver in your particular airplane.  Altitudes.  Airspeeds.  Power Settings.  Bank Angles.  A complete, concise recipe, 

in point form.

You can use the Briefing Card in the airplane when you are teaching a maneuver, to make sure you do it right and don’t

forget anything.  You can also use the Briefing Card as the “How” section of your ground lesson plan.  If you take the time

to develop a complete set of Briefing Cards like your grandmother, your checkride will be a helluva lot easier.  You will

really appreciate having them, as a beginner CFI.  They are like training wheels on your bicycle when you were a little kid.

Now, being the extraordinarily lazy person that I am, when I finally got around to converting to my FAA CFI, I was absolutely

certain that someone somewhere would have developed a set of FAA lesson plans that I could massage slightly for a particular

aircraft trainer type (eg airspeeds, power).  I mean, flight training in America is huge, right?  I asked around and everyone

said to get something called “BackSeat Pilot” lesson plans.  After shelling out hundreds of dollars, I received an enormous

collection of PDF’s.  I emailed the author, a nice young man called Nate, and told him that while he had produced an amazing

encyclopedia of aviation training, what he was selling was in no way a collection of FAA lesson plans, and maybe he should 

consider producing a new product which was in fact that?  I think I hurt his feelings but I didn’t mean to.  He is a nice young 

man and he clearly worked very hard on his products, which I recommend if you are low-time commercial pilot starting CFI 

training, which frankly I found a little odd, from my ancient, international perspective, but that’s different subject.

Nate’s products remind me of something terribly important: DON’T PUT TOO MUCH INFORMATION IN YOUR LESSON PLAN.

This is a newbie mistake.  New flight instructors will show up with 25 pages and 1000 pieces of information in a lesson plan

that they have worked very, very hard on, to include every possible detail.  While I understand the motivation to do this,

remember that the poor student has a finite attention span and might remember three things that you teach him in 15 minutes.  

So, you need to very carefully prioritize what you teach him.  Emphasize the important stuff and ruthlessly delete the “nice to know” 

stuff.  This is actually the hallmark of a master at any craft.  After decades, he knows what’s important and what isn’t, and he only 

keeps around the important stuff, and this makes it look easy.  No wasted effort.

Now of course, you as as a teacher need to have considerably more depth of knowledge than is initially presented to the

student, and at appropriate times, you can dive into that detail.  But your complete knowledge of a subject should NOT be in 

the lesson plan, which should be very concise.   Such “nice to know” detail can distract the student from what he needs to know.  

I understand that as a low-time commercial pilot it may not be initially obvious which buckets stuff goes into (need to know vs 

nice to know vs who cares).  That’s why you should work with an experienced pilot who can help you triage.

As always, the above is worth precisely what you just paid me for it.  Anything more is a bonus.

acboyd@gmail.com   Oct 2026