Rod Machado's FREE Ground School Training Syllabus

Description

Private Pilot Ground School Syllabus for Instructors and Students

Copyright 2022/Updated to 2025

I'd like to offer you my FREE Private Pilot Ground School Syllabus. It is completely FREE (so is the Flight Training Training Syllabus, too). Simply add the syllabus to your cart and head to checkout. Complete the checkout information and you'll see a link for the download on the checkout page. You'll also receive a download link via email.

What's The Purpose of The Ground School Syllabus?
There's nothing quite like having private pilot students attend a real-live ground school that doesn't take six months to complete. While students can easily pass the FAA private pilot knowledge exam without attending ground school (the training materials recommended in the flight training syllabus allow them to do that on their own), you might think about teaching your own ground school class. Here are a few things to consider.

How to Set Up Your Own Ground School as a CFI or BGI

One of the very best things a flight instructor can do is teach a ground school. Not only does this help bring in extra income (typically this is $250/$350 per student with 10 students in each class), it also helps an instructor become a better teacher. Here’s a quick course in setting up an effective course.

The format: Teach an eight to nine-week course with classes that meet twice a week for three hours a night. Give short breaks every hour, and have coffee, water, and soft drinks available for every class. Invite your students to bring in cookies or candy for everyone if they want, too... Start class no later than 7 p.m. and end no later than 10 p.m. Don’t play music or videos before the class or during break time. It deprives the students of the opportunity to chat and exchange stories.

Creating a course: Begin by selecting a good aviation text and a question and answer book of FAA test questions. Have students purchase a copy of each. Divide the course topics between the number of weeks chosen for training. Make a personal outline of the material covered in the FAA test questions specific to each topic you’ll discuss (i.e., aerodynamics, engine operations, FARs, etc.). Use this outline to teach from. It assures you’ll cover at least the very basic material expected in a ground school. Then add more material to help make pilots safer, instead of just teaching test questions. Assign homework from the test question book to cover topics covered in class. If you're an instructor looking for visual aids, consider purchasing my Unique Ground School Images to help you teach your class or to help you develop lesson plans as a flight instructor candidate.  Visual aids: The least expensive way to use visual aids is to visit eBay or the local school district’s surplus equipment warehouse and buy an inexpensive overhead projector. Create transparencies of the pictures, charts, tables and text you want to use (it’s relatively inexpensive to photocopy material onto transparency film). Give each student three 3x5 cards with the letters A, B or C written on them. Show multiple choice questions on the overhead and have students hold up the correct answer card. Don’t allow students to turn around and peek at each other’s answer.

Fun: Make the experience fun for students. They’ll love you for it.

Click this link for PDF upload directions to your iPad.