starting a ground school

[NOGUFFCHET]

Im going to be teaching my first PPL ground school. While I have a lot of help from other instructors, I will be teaching it privately and am interested in any tips that anybody has to help me make it the best experience it can be for my students and myself...

-I am planning so far to teach out of the FAA pubs. is this a good idea, or should I use some kind of set (asa, jepp...)?
-The class will be small, probably around five students.

Any suggestions or stories about that may shed some light on how to best accomplish ride the steep learning curve of pilot to teacher would be great. Ive been flying commercially (small equip, 135 & banners) for a few years and have never used my CFI for income. I know that it will be a lot of prep and hard work to get myself into the mode of instructor.

thanks!

[shdw]

When I ran my ground school I did it with the Jep book. Each week they were assigned to read a chapter and do homework that I made for that chapter. When they arrived at class I gave them a quiz with easy material. Half of the questions were right off the homework reworded and the other half were easy questions typically with one or two harder ones.

I then had an outline developed for each chapter which I used to teach that chapter and take notes on what worked and didn't work. I passed out a basic copy of the outline without my notes on it for them to take notes on.

Overall feedback was good but some people didn't like the quiz without a discussion first. The quiz was designed basically to ensure they read the chapter, not be difficult or confusing.

Finally, for each chapter I went online and looked for related articles which I posted on an internet site I built for this class on my own home server. The internet site was just an online forum used as a security system to open up files for them to download. It had these articles, the homework, and the lesson outlines available so I didn't have to make 100s of printouts.

Good luck.

[escapepilot]

I've taught using both Jepp and FAA materials and I prefer the FAA. Jepp is good and they do a lot of the prep work for you, but they include too much filler for my personal taste. I also like the Gleim test study guide.

Definitely use an outline to teach from and make out questions for each chapter and assign those as homework (like shdw said, to ensure they read the material). Also, I would stress at the start of the class that THEY are responsible for learnig the material. Your job is to help them do that, but you cannot teach them everything they need to know if they don't read and study.

Many years ago when I took private pilot ground school, we had a class of 20 people. The instructor said half would drop out before the class was over, probably only two would pass the final exam, and only one would pass the FAA test on the first attempt. He was right.

[NOGUFFCHET]

thanks, yeah, i kind of feel the same way about the FAA stuff, it is to the point, and while it may be dry, it doesn't waste time. i guess my biggest question is.... how much time should I put into covering new material each lesson, (or) should it all be clarification from reading previously assigned?

[shdw]

Originally Posted by NOGUFFCHET

how much time should I put into covering new material each lesson, (or) should it all be clarification from reading previously assigned?

For me, it was all clarification on what was read. They would read, do the homework, come in and take the quiz, and then I would give the lesson. Yes, quiz first. This is how my college did it. I had a class of 11, only 5 made it to the end. Of those, 3 took the final and 2 passed. The 3 that took the final were all my average students, the 2 that didn't were away on business trips and never got back to me, they both had 95+ in the class. So likely pass rate would have been 4 out 5 with 6 drop outs.

IMO you are not there to teach them this stuff, but instead guide them through it and provide clarifications. I use the term teaching loosely to mean "spoon feed." I really liked the quizzes before I went over the material though, it seemed people wouldn't just read but also study what they read. If it is just homework then they skim it and answer the questions, which isn't sufficient.

[escapepilot]

Originally Posted by shdw

For me, it was all clarification on what was read. They would read, do the homework, come in and take the quiz, and then I would give the lesson. Yes, quiz first. This is how my college did it. I had a class of 11, only 5 made it to the end. Of those, 3 took the final and 2 passed. The 3 that took the final were all my average students, the 2 that didn't were away on business trips and never got back to me, they both had 95+ in the class. So likely pass rate would have been 4 out 5 with 6 drop outs.

IMO you are not there to teach them this stuff, but instead guide them through it and provide clarifications. I use the term teaching loosely to mean "spoon feed." I really liked the quizzes before I went over the material though, it seemed people wouldn't just read but also study what they read. If it is just homework then they skim it and answer the questions, which isn't sufficient.

PS - I still haven't figured out the ideal ground school so all of my advice is theory.