Course development, lesson plans, and classroom training techniques

The candidate writes a lesson plan to the North Aero template and teaches from it. The plan they leave with is the one critiqued in lesson 4, revised, and re-taught, which is how revision becomes part of the program rather than an optional extra.

This is the longest lesson in phase 1 and the one the rest of the program depends on most. It carries 2.0 ground hours because the candidate writes in it rather than reading about writing.

Element 3 is where completion standards get taught, and it is the highest-leverage twenty minutes in phase 1. Every lesson the candidate ever writes will be as good as their grasp of a performance-based objective. Use the worked examples in standards/LESSON-PLAN-TEMPLATE.md: they exist for this element.

Element 5, demonstration-performance, is the method they will use most. Spend the time there rather than distributing it evenly across six methods.

Instructor: FAA-H-8083-9B ch 5 and 7. FAA-S-ACS-25 at FI.I.C. standards/LESSON-PLAN-TEMPLATE.md. program/COVERAGE-MATRIX.md to show how the ACS structures a curriculum.

Candidate: preparation deliverable, the template, something to write with. They will write a full plan in this lesson.

Room: Meet running, separate devices, headsets.

1. Teach elements 1 to 11. Keep element 3 unhurried.
2. Assign the subject for element 12 yourself, at the start of the lesson. Do not let the candidate pick, and do not tell them in advance. FI.I.C.S1 requires a plan appropriate to the task and the learner, and choosing the subject for them is closer to what an evaluator does. Assign a ground subject from the phase 2 set.
3. While they write, do not hover. Read what they produce afterwards rather than steering it live.
4. Simulated Student role, element 13. A student who has read ahead and asks a question the candidate's plan does not cover. Do not be hostile about it. Be curious.
5. Critique the plan and the teaching separately. They fail in different ways.
6. Tell the candidate this plan is the one they will revise and re-teach in lesson 4. Say it at the end of this lesson so they know the revision is coming and do not treat the plan as finished.

1. Arrive with the deliverable.
2. Write a full lesson plan to the template, in the lesson, on a subject the instructor assigns.
3. Teach a block from it.
4. Handle a question the plan does not cover, without abandoning the plan.
5. Self-critique first.

Identical wording in the study guide.

1. The candidate writes a lesson plan to standards/LESSON-PLAN-TEMPLATE.md on an assigned subject, with every required field completed, within the lesson.
2. The plan's completion standards are stated as observable behavior, and the candidate can say, for each one, what an observer would see. A recall-only standard fails this.
3. The candidate teaches a block from their own plan and follows it, rather than teaching a remembered version of the subject with the plan on the table.
4. The candidate names the delivery method they chose for that block and why that method rather than another.
5. The candidate answers a question their plan does not cover without either guessing or abandoning the lesson structure, and says afterwards where it belongs in the plan.
6. The candidate delivers a self-critique before hearing the instructor's.

Not applicable. Ground lesson.

Verbatim in the study guide.

Read:

• FAA-H-8083-9B, chapter 5, The Teaching Process.
• FAA-H-8083-9B, chapter 7, Planning Instructional Activity.
• FAA-S-ACS-25, Area of Operation I, Task C.
• standards/LESSON-PLAN-TEMPLATE.md, all of it, including the worked examples of completion standards and the minimum plan set.

Deliverable: Two completion standards you have been held to in your own training, written out as your instructor stated them, plus your rewrite of each as a performance-based objective. If the original was already performance-based, say so and explain what makes it so.

Available and used: the 2026-07-29 power-off stalls lesson. That lesson had a plan behind it and a Simulated Student in front of it. Use it for element 10, lesson plans in practice: the opening sentence establishes the block of learning, and the lesson proceeds through demonstration-performance. Ask the candidate to reconstruct what the plan's completion standard must have been from the shape of the lesson, then compare with what they would have written.

Located 2026-08-14 and available: North Aero's own private pilot phase 1 syllabus. Excerpt in materials/reused/Phase1_Fundamentals_Private_Pilot_excerpt.md, Curriculum 5.0, lessons 01 to 08, flown in the PA-28-151 Warrior out of KSNS. This is the real syllabus the school hands private students, which is exactly what element 10 asked for and could not previously get.

Use it for element 10 like this. Each lesson carries an objective, a named ground lesson, a numbered flight task list, items needed for success, completion standards, and questions. Have the candidate find the blocks of learning without being told where they are: lessons 01 to 03 build the four fundamentals, 04 to 06 add ground reference, hood work and emergencies, and 07 to 08 move into the pattern. Then ask the question that matters, which is why the ground lesson attached to each flight lesson is the one it is. Aerodynamics and spin awareness sits at lesson 02, immediately before the student's first power-off stalls at lesson 02 and 03. That is a block of learning sequenced deliberately, and a candidate who can see why will build their own the same way.

Two things about it are worth showing rather than hiding. Its front matter is versioned "Curriculum 5.0" while the school's rate reference describes a "5.1" whose phase 1 runs to lesson 11 rather than lesson 08. A live syllabus has versions and they drift, and a candidate who believes a syllabus is written once has not met one. Ask them which version they would be teaching from and how they would know.

What this excerpt is not used for. Its technical content is private pilot scope and has not been reviewed against CFI standards. It is here as an example of how a real course is structured, not as a source for what to teach. See materials/MATERIALS-REVIEW.md.

program/PROGRAM-STRUCTURE.md remains the second worked example and is still worth using, because it is the candidate's own syllabus and they can compare the two.

None. This lesson teaches no maneuver.

This lesson is complete and deliverable whether or not its Video Slots are filled. It has none.

Critique the plan and the teaching separately. A good plan taught badly and a bad plan taught well are different problems with different corrections, and merging them into one critique helps nobody.

Keep this plan. It is the input to lesson 4, where it is critiqued, revised, and re-taught. That sequence is a US-3.2 acceptance criterion and it is satisfied here and in lesson 4 together, not in either alone.

This lesson starts the minimum plan set. Parameter P3 requires seventeen plans by lesson 40. This is number one. Tell the candidate that.

Tracker Status set by the instructor, named, dated.

• ✓Traces to a story. US-3.2, US-2.3
• ✓Carries ACS tasks and Part 61 references
• ✓Completion standards are observable behavior
• ✓Common errors listed, including the memorize-the-list failure mode
• ✓Intervention threshold: not applicable, ground lesson, reason given
• ✓Student preparation named, in the student half
• ✓FAA references verified current, 2026-08-13
• ✓Passes the design system check
• ✓Appears in the program structure and coverage matrix, hours reconciling
• ✓Both halves exist
• ✓Video Slots: none, and the lesson says so
• ✓Vocabulary matches CONTEXT.md
• ✓No em dashes, no POH performance numbers, no pricing
• ✓Real North Aero syllabus excerpt for element 10. Closed 2026-08-14. The private pilot phase 1 syllabus, Curriculum 5.0, is at materials/reused/Phase1_Fundamentals_Private_Pilot_excerpt.md