Flight Instructor Program · standards
Ticket: 07. Lesson plan template and two-sided lesson convention
Stories: US-3.2, US-2.3, and the shape every lesson in this program is written to
Gate: Enrollment
Issued: 2026-08-13
Every lesson in this program is two documents: an instructor-facing plan and a student-facing study guide. That is cross-cutting requirement 7, it doubles the document count, and it is the requirement that made the trailing gate necessary. It is worth getting exactly right before writing fourteen phase 1 documents against it.
A Supervising Instructor should be able to pick up any lesson cold and teach it. A candidate should be able to open the student half and know what to do before they arrive.
| Instructor plan | Student study guide | |
|---|---|---|
| Audience | A Delivery Pool instructor teaching this lesson, possibly for the first time | The CFI Candidate, before and during the lesson |
| Answers | How do I run this lesson | What do I do, and what will I be held to |
| Objectives | Yes | Yes, in the candidate's terms |
| Elements | Yes, with teaching sequence and emphasis | Yes, as a topic list to study |
| Schedule | Yes, with timings | No. Timings are the instructor's problem |
| Equipment | Yes | Yes, the part the candidate brings |
| Instructor actions | Yes | No |
| Student actions | Yes | Yes |
| Completion standards | Yes, verbatim | Yes, verbatim identical |
| Student preparation block | Yes, so the instructor knows what was asked | Yes. This is its home |
| Common errors | Yes, with how to respond | Yes, as things to watch for in yourself |
| Intervention threshold, flight lessons | Yes, explicit | Yes, explicit |
| Simulated Student script notes | Yes | No. Handing the candidate the role play in advance defeats it |
| Assessment notes and what to look for | Yes | No |
| ACS task codes and Part 61 references | Yes | Yes |
| Video Slots | Yes | Yes |
| FAA verification date | Yes | Yes |
Three things appear verbatim in both halves, and it is not redundancy.
The Simulated Student's script notes. The instructor plan carries what the Simulated Student should ask, get wrong, and push back on. The candidate does not get to prepare for it. That is the whole value of the role play.
Copy this. Every field is required. A field that does not apply is marked "not applicable" with a reason, never deleted.
# Lesson NN. Topic
Phase: N | Ground: N.N | Dual: N.N
ACS tasks: `FI.I.A`, `AI.II.D`
Part 61 references:
Stories: US-N.N
FAA references verified: YYYY-MM-DD
Version: N.N, YYYY-MM-DDOne or two sentences. What the candidate will be able to do at the end that they could not do at the start. Written as capability, not as coverage.
The content, in teaching order. Each element carries its source, so an instructor can go to the source rather than trust the summary.
| Block | Minutes | Total must equal the ground and dual hours declared above.
What the instructor brings. What the candidate brings. What the airplane needs.
What the instructor does, in sequence. Includes the Simulated Student role: what they ask, what they get wrong on purpose, when they push back.
What the candidate does. On a teaching lesson this is most of the lesson.
Observable behavior. See the rule below. Identical wording in the study guide.
Including the memorize-the-list failure mode where it applies. Each error carries the instructor's response.
Flight lessons only. The point at which the instructor takes the airplane, stated explicitly. "As required" is not an intervention threshold.
Named readings with edition and section. A specific deliverable. Appears verbatim in the study guide.
Named placeholders. See the convention below.
What the instructor is looking for, and how to grade it against the completion standards using standards/CRITIQUE-STANDARD.md.
The checklist below, ticked.
# Lesson NN. Topic
Phase: N | Ground: N.N | Dual: N.N
What this lesson is for: one sentence, plain.The student preparation block, verbatim from the plan. Named readings. The deliverable you bring.
The elements, as a topic list.
The student actions.
The completion standards, verbatim identical to the instructor plan.
The common errors, framed as things to watch for in yourself.
Flight lessons only. The intervention threshold, verbatim.
The Video Slots, and whether they are filled yet.
---A completion standard states what the candidate does, where an observer would agree on whether it happened. A recall-only standard fails this template. This is US-3.1's requirement and it is the single rule most likely to be broken under time pressure, because recall standards are much easier to write.
| Fails | Passes |
|---|---|
| "The candidate understands the laws of learning" | "The candidate teaches the laws of learning to the Simulated Student, using an example from a real flight lesson for at least two of them, and answers a question about a third without notes" |
| "The candidate knows the airspace requirements" | "The candidate teaches Class D entry requirements to the Simulated Student and correctly answers three scenario questions about equipment and communication" |
| "Demonstrates satisfactory steep turns" | "The candidate flies steep turns to commercial tolerance from the right seat while narrating the maneuver continuously, and does not go silent through the roll-in" |
| "Understands when to take the airplane" | "The candidate states the intervention threshold before the flight and takes the airplane at or before it during at least one deliberately induced deviation" |
The test to apply: could two instructors watching the same lesson disagree about whether the standard was met? If yes, rewrite it.
On teaching lessons, per US-4.1, the completion standard is a taught presentation, never a recited answer.
Per Decision 33 and cross-cutting requirement 10, video never gates a lesson.
A Video Slot is a named placeholder where a Clip will be linked. It lets a lesson be written, reviewed, and delivered before its Clip exists, so video production never gates curriculum.
Naming. VS-<lesson number>-<sequence>, with a type and the ACS task it illustrates. For example: VS-32-1, Exemplar, AI.X.C.
Per maneuver lesson, per US-12.1 and Decision 32: exactly one Exemplar Clip and one or more Error Clips. The Exemplar is not optional. A candidate shown only failures cannot reliably recognize a pass, which is why the ratio is one and one-or-more rather than a pile of errors.
Every slot carries, whether filled or not:
### VS-32-1
Type: Exemplar | ACS task: `AI.X.C` | Status: empty
What it should show: a power-off stall recognized and recovered at first indication,
with minimum altitude loss
Reference Critique: not applicable for an Exemplar### VS-32-2
Type: Error | ACS task: `AI.X.C` | Status: empty
What it should show: recovery initiated late, secondary stall on recovery
Reference Critique: [the written statement of what errors this Clip contains,
derived from the Instructor Debrief of that flight]Every lesson carrying a slot says, in both halves, that the lesson is complete and deliverable with the slot empty. Use this sentence: "This lesson is complete and deliverable whether or not its Video Slots are filled."
The curriculum supplies slots and ACS task tags. It does not supply Clips. Curation is Erick's, personally, per lesson (Decision 32, interface 7).
US-3.2 requires the candidate to produce plans for a defined minimum set. This defines it.
The expectation is that you write a plan for every lesson you teach. The set below is the floor that must exist, in your own writing, before the mock oral at lesson 40.
Ground subjects, six minimum. One from each row.
| Cluster | Example subjects |
|---|---|
| Regulations and publications | AI.II.J, AI.III.A |
| Airspace | AI.II.G |
| Systems, performance, or weight and balance | AI.II.E, AI.II.F |
| Weather | AI.III.C |
| Human factors, aeromedical, or scanning | AI.II.A, AI.II.B |
| Endorsements and logbook entries | AI.II.K |
Maneuvers, ten minimum. One from each row.
| Cluster | Example maneuvers |
|---|---|
| A fundamental of flight | AI.VIII.A to AI.VIII.D |
| A ground reference maneuver | AI.IX.E |
| A performance maneuver at private standards | AI.IX.A |
| A performance maneuver at commercial standards | AI.IX.C, AI.IX.D, AI.IX.F |
| Slow flight | AI.X.A |
| A power-off stall | AI.X.C |
| A power-on or accelerated stall | AI.X.D, AI.X.E |
| A normal takeoff and landing | AI.VII.A, AI.VII.B |
| A short-field or soft-field operation | AI.VII.C to AI.VII.F |
| An emergency operation | AI.XII.A to AI.XII.D |
Plus spin awareness, AI.X.I, as a ground lesson plan. Seventeen plans in total.
At least one plan is critiqued, revised, and re-taught. This is a US-3.2 acceptance criterion and it is not satisfied by writing a plan and being told it is fine. Revision is built into the program rather than left optional: the plan written in lesson 3 is critiqued in lesson 4, revised, and re-taught. Pick a plan you got wrong.
Every plan you write is written to this template, in your own words. A plan copied from a commercial binder is not a plan you can teach from under pressure, and an examiner will find that out in about ninety seconds.
The design system is the source of record. design-system/README.md, with tokens in design-system/colors_and_type.css. Read it before writing anything a candidate or instructor sees. The rules broken most often in this project's prose:
118.3 MHz, N41459, 1,500 ft AGL. Also used in this project for ACS task codes and regulation citations.Cross-cutting requirement 1 also names design-system/print-documents.md for print and docx output. That file has never been written. The print rules are not inferable from the web tokens, and inventing them here would create a second source of truth that quietly disagrees with the real one when it arrives.
The following decisions are therefore recorded as provisional and will be revisited when the print rules exist. See ticket 01 and design-system/INSTALL.md.
| Decision | Provisional choice | Revisit when |
|---|---|---|
| Source format for lessons | Markdown, converted at output time | Print rules define the authoring format |
| Page size, margins, and grid for printed lessons | Not decided. Do not invent one | Print rules exist |
| Typeface substitution in print | Not decided | Print rules exist |
| Table rendering in docx | Not provisional. Real tables with DXA widths and ShadingType CLEAR, never tab-leader layouts. Cross-cutting requirement 2 already binds this | Never. This one is settled |
| Two-sided output as one file or two | Two files, one per side | Print rules may prefer a single duplex document |
From CFI_User_Stories.md section 9. Copy this checklist onto every lesson document and tick it.
- [ ] Traces to at least one story in CFI_User_Stories.md
- [ ] Carries the ACS tasks and Part 61 references it satisfies
- [ ] Completion standards stated as observable behavior
- [ ] Common errors listed
- [ ] Intervention threshold stated (flight lessons)
- [ ] Student preparation requirement named, in the student half
- [ ] FAA references verified current, with the date on the document
- [ ] Passes the design system check for its output format
- [ ] Appears in program/PROGRAM-STRUCTURE.md and program/COVERAGE-MATRIX.md, hours reconciling
- [ ] Both halves exist: instructor plan and student study guide
- [ ] Video Slots named, and the lesson states it is deliverable with them empty
- [ ] Vocabulary matches CONTEXT.md exactly
- [ ] No em dashes, no reproduced POH performance numbers, no pricingThe last four are this project's additions to the section 9 list, covering cross-cutting requirements 7, 10, 11, and 3, 5, 8.
design-system/README.md