The easiest way to become familiar with MyCFIBook.com is to use it as you prepare a lesson. The process below follows a lesson from preparation through debriefing, showing where each resource fits.
Before beginning, it helps to understand how the website organizes the resources that support that process.
The website brings together three types of resources:
- Book Pages explain what is being taught.
- Lesson Plans organize how that content is taught.
- Instructor aids help brief, assess, document, or conduct a particular activity.
Instructors bring those parts together and adapt them to the learner and the operating environment.
Begin with the Fundamentals of Instructing
Before teaching, instructors need a working knowledge of how people learn, how instruction is organized, and how performance is assessed. Review the Fundamentals of Instructing material as needed. The Techniques of Flight Instruction page is especially useful for guidance on briefings, demonstrations, and feedback.
Prepare the Lesson
- Define the Outcome: Choose the applicable Lesson Plan and consider the learners' backgrounds, recent experience, stage of training, prerequisites, and goals.
- Review the Material: Be prepared to explain the objectives, theory, procedure, common errors, risks, and applicable standards. Confirm that the selected material supports the planned scope.
- Add Specific Information: Review the Aircraft Specific Training section, then add the applicable AFM/POH procedures, limitations, checklists, local procedures, route or training-area considerations, and current operating conditions.
- Build a Timeline: Use the Lesson Plan Schedule as a planning estimate. Add time for setup, preflight activity, taxi, travel to the training area, transitions between tasks, and any other operational activity not included in the listed instructional segments.
- Gather Resources: Bring the Lesson Plan, the references and equipment listed in it, the airplane documents and checklists, and any separate briefing aids, flight-planning forms, training records, or assessment tools needed for that lesson.
Conduct a Typical Lesson
- Open the Lesson: Use the Lesson Plan Introduction to gain attention and explain why the subject matters. Use the Objectives as the overview. Adapt the wording naturally rather than reading the sections as a script.
- Present the Subject: Teach the Lesson Elements in their displayed order. The Task Briefing Guide provides a useful structure: identify what is being learned, explain why it matters, cover the essential theory, explain how it is performed or applied, and discuss common errors, checklists, risks, connections, and completion requirements.
- Brief the Flight: For a flight lesson, use the Flight Lesson Briefing Guide to cover the mission and logistics. This whole-flight briefing complements rather than replaces the individual task briefing.
- Apply the Material: Use demonstrations, guided practice, scenarios, and questions as appropriate. Follow the airplane's procedures and limitations, adjust the depth and pace to learner performance, and avoid introducing unnecessary material during periods of high workload.
- Review the Standard: When included, the selected ACS summary provides a quick reference for the task's performance elements. The Lesson Plan Completion Standards answer a different question: whether the lesson objectives were met and whether performance was appropriate to the present stage of training. Use the current ACS whenever the exact certification standard is needed.
- Debrief and Plan the Next Step: Begin with learner self-assessment, then compare the lesson with the objectives, observed performance, and completion standards. Use the Lesson Debriefing or Review and Assessment section to address questions and provide useful feedback. The postflight portion of the Flight Lesson Briefing Guide can provide additional structure when needed. Record the training, assign any follow-up study, and identify what comes next.
Ground Lessons
The same basic sequence applies without the flight portion. For example, the Weather Information Lesson Plan introduces the subject, states the objectives, organizes the Book Content, applies the material using actual weather information and decision-making, and ends with Review and Assessment.
Instructor Aids
The Briefing Aids, Instructor Checklists, Flight Planning Forms, and Training Forms support the working lesson. Select only what the session requires.
Combine Lesson Plans into One Session
A flight period may include more than one topic. For example, an instructor might combine Steep Turns and Proficiency Stalls. Use both plans as planning inputs to one combined lesson.
- Review both sets of objectives, prerequisites, lesson content, schedules, equipment, and completion standards.
- Create one opening and presentation. Teach the shared theory once rather than repeating it.
- Keep each maneuver organized as a complete task: theory, procedure, common errors, and standards. Discuss shared risk-management items in the preflight briefing or as a final wrap-up before flight.
- Create a single timeline that allocates sufficient ground instruction, practice, and assessment for each maneuver.
- Choose the flight order based on the altitude, weather, traffic, and efficient use of the training area.
- Conduct one postflight discussion, but assess each task against its own objectives and standards.
If the combined preparation, briefing, practice, or assessment cannot be completed effectively in the available period, divide the material into separate lessons.
Specialty Example: Conducting a Flight Review
A flight review is individualized, so three resources work together:
- Use Conduct of a Flight Review for instructor preparation, regulatory requirements, completion standards, and post-review actions.
- Use the Flight Review Lesson Plan to organize the initial conversation, ground review, flight activities, postflight discussion, and completion decision.
- Use the Flight Review Checklist to record the items selected for the review.
The Flight Review Lesson Plan contains a broad ground review menu. Tailor it to the pilot's experience, recency, normal operations, airplane, and goals rather than attempting to give every pilot the same review. Add appropriate resources when they support the individual review.