Typing up a lesson plan on your own is no easy task. It involves lots of research to accrue accurate and concise information. To make a lesson plan even better, it should involve an illustration or visualization of the topic at hand. This is because an effective lesson is not just a classroom and a CFI who is talking for two hours until it is time to go fly. It involves multi-faceted learning methods, which means you, as the flight instructor, need to make sure your students retain the information you are giving to them in the most effective manner possible.
That is why you should use multiple methods of teaching such as a classroom setting, videos, pictures, and lastly, written and verbal quizzes meant for learning. A popular method of teaching systems, for example, is by simply doing part of the lesson next to the aircraft. Hands-on lessons are proven to be the most effective to the most people overall, and when it comes to pilots, most are hands-on learners.
Let me be the good example and write up a quick lesson plan for this lesson.
Lesson objective:
To familiarize the student with the basics of lesson plan writing, including formatting, how to conduct proper research, and reference list building.
Content:
Schedule:
Ground discussion of 60 minutes.
Equipment:
Whiteboard and markers, printed copies of this lesson plan for the student, and a copy of the Aviation Instructor's Handbook.
Instructor's actions:
Present the material through guided discussion, provide the student with a printed lesson plan to follow along and annotate, and answer questions as they come up.
Student's actions:
Participate in the discussion, take notes on the handout, and ask questions on anything that is unclear.
Completion standards:
The student should have a good understanding of how to gather the information needed for an effective lesson plan, be able to name the elements of a lesson plan, and be able to demonstrate proficiency in lesson plan writing.
References:
Aviation Instructor's Handbook, Chapter 5 (The Teaching Process) and Chapter 7 (Planning Instructional Activity).
You will notice that the outline above has seven parts to it rather than the four or five that a lot of instructors get away with. That is deliberate, because those seven elements are what the FAA describes in the Aviation Instructor's Handbook, and they are what an examiner will be looking for when they ask you to produce a lesson plan on your CFI checkride.
The elements are the objective, the content or elements of the lesson, the schedule, the equipment, the instructor's actions, the student's actions, and the completion standards. You do not need to label them exactly as they are labeled here, but you should be able to point to each one in your own format and explain why it is there.
Two of them get skipped more than the rest, and they are the two that make the lesson actually run on time. The equipment section forces you to figure out in advance whether you need a whiteboard, a model, a chart, or the aircraft itself, which is the difference between a smooth lesson and one where you walk out to the ramp halfway through. The instructor's actions and student's actions sections force you to decide who is doing what and for how long. Without them, a lesson plan is really just a list of topics.
Your completion standards should also tie back to the standard the student is actually being tested against. For a helicopter student that means the applicable Airman Certification Standards, and for a lesson on an individual maneuver it is worth writing the tolerances straight into the completion standards so both you and the student know exactly what "done" looks like.
One note on terminology while you are writing. The FAA replaced the Practical Test Standards with the Airman Certification Standards for the rotorcraft helicopter ratings effective May 31, 2024. If your lesson plans still say PTS, they are due for an update. The Flight Instructor Helicopter standards are now FAA-S-ACS-29.
The contents of a lesson plan, not including the outline itself as seen above, should include the topics and subtopics you intend to teach your student. How much detail and information you put into the lesson plan is up to your personal preference. Some people prefer bullet points, while others prefer full paragraphs.
Regardless, your text should be concise yet informative. That is not an easy balance to find. Your lesson plan should include the minimums of what you expect to teach your students. It is not realistic that you have all the information you know about the subject written on there, as it would take up too much space and would no longer be efficient. Instead, write up your lesson in a way which triggers your memory through a quick read. In this way you can prepare for your lesson in a matter of minutes prior to the actual lesson, and avoid having to read several pages in order to remember everything you need to talk about.
In addition, visuals are amazing at triggering memories. A great illustration can give you all the insight you need to effectively gather your thoughts and teach the lesson.
Formatting is another piece of an effective lesson plan. If your lesson is a whole page of words with no spacing or structure, you will never want to look at it again. You need to format it in a way that makes reading your lesson quick and easy. As a bonus point, this will make your lesson plans great handouts to your students. Bring your lesson into the classroom with you as a guideline, and when you are done with the lesson, give it to your student. I hand my students a copy of my lesson plans in the beginning of the lesson. In that way, they can follow along and write personalized notes on the paper, if they feel the need to.
The Aviation Instructor's Handbook also lists a set of characteristics that a well-planned lesson should have, and they are worth knowing both for your own writing and for your checkride. A good lesson has unity, meaning each lesson is a self-contained segment with limited objectives. It has appropriate content, building new material on what the student already knows. It has a sensible scope, covering what is necessary and nothing more. It is practical, meaning it reflects the conditions you will actually be teaching in. It is flexible enough to be adapted to the student in front of you. It relates clearly to the overall course of training. And it follows a logical set of instructional steps.
Making an effective lesson plan requires research to make your lesson as informative and accurate as possible. Generally, the FAA has great material for all levels of aviation. I recommend reading the sections related to your lesson plan, and writing notes as you go.
Use multiple sources. For example, if you are writing about general aerodynamics, find as many credible sources on the subject as you can. When it comes to flight training, the FAA and flight schools prefer official FAA material as the source. There is a lot of great material out there from other sources, but the FAA has written their material in a way which coincides nicely with the Airman Certification Standards, making it easier for your students and the designated pilot examiner to understand each other. European sources will use different verbiage, which may result in confusion with an American DPE.
For helicopter lessons in particular, your core sources are going to be the Helicopter Flying Handbook (FAA-H-8083-21), the Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge (FAA-H-8083-25), the Aviation Instructor's Handbook (FAA-H-8083-9B), the applicable ACS, and the rotorcraft flight manual for the aircraft you are teaching in. Those five will cover the overwhelming majority of what you need, and the ACS itself lists the references for every task, so it will tell you where to look before you even start.
The FAA also publishes fill-in lesson plan templates as a free download, which is a reasonable place to start if you would rather not build your formatting from scratch.
Having accurate references is key for a good flight instructor. It is something that is quickly forgotten as a newer flight instructor gets more experienced. Every single lesson you teach should refer to at least one credible source. The student should never walk away from the lesson empty-handed. Give them the source however you prefer, whether that is a reference, a link, or a handout.
The most important thing here is that the student gets the chance to review the material, which should be done both before and after the lesson, and that they get to see where all the information you are teaching them is coming from. If your student is not able to find information by themselves, then their future as a pilot is going to be needlessly convoluted.
There is one more reason to be disciplined about this, and it shows up on your own checkride rather than your student's. On the CFI oral, the examiner expects you to teach from prepared, referenced material, and an answer without a reference behind it does not carry much weight. Building the habit now means your binder is already checkride-ready when you get there. I have written more about that in our post on the best way to study for the CFI oral checkride.
One of my references to this blog post is attached right below. That makes it pretty easy for you to do your own research and study up at your own pace. Make it just as easy for your own students. Learning comes from multiple sources such as the classroom, reading, hands-on work, and video, rather than from any one of them alone.
If you are working toward your CFI, it is worth knowing exactly what the ACS asks of you here. Under Area of Operation I, Task C, you are required to be able to prepare an instructional lesson plan using teaching methods and materials appropriate to the task and the learner, for two specific cases. The first is an aeronautical knowledge ground lesson suitable for a classroom. The second is a maneuver introduction and ground lesson.
Those are two different animals. A knowledge lesson on airspace looks nothing like a maneuver introduction for a straight-in autorotation, and the examiner may well ask for either one. If you are building your library from scratch, make sure you have both types covered rather than writing ten of one and none of the other.
This article has been designed as a template for you to see what a lesson plan could look like. You might want to add some illustrations, maybe a link to a video, or you might want to cut down on the text or simply put it into bullet points. There is no single correct way of making a lesson plan. As long as it works for you and it has a similar setup to what the FAA is looking for, which you can see in the reference above, then you will be good to go.
Should you be in need of helicopter lesson plans, I have made it easy and made them all for you. Complete with concise and accurate details, custom illustrations, and regularly updated references, this collection of lesson plans makes a fantastic helicopter CFI binder. There is a helicopter CFII binder as well if you are working on the instrument instructor rating.