Lesson pre-briefs

Ideally the student should have studied up on the lesson the night before.

At this point you just follow the syllabus (if using one)

Make sure you ask the student questions about the maneuvers being done instead of assuming the student already knows information.

The pre-flight briefing should not take very long as the student should know the information though home study and previous ground schools.

The key to a good pre-flight briefing is to be concise. The reason behind this is so that you don't take up all the time allotted for flight as the maneuvers and such should have been discussed previously in ground school. Items such as system malfunctions can be discussed during the pre-flight of the aircraft.
 
I go through the lesson syllabus, and ask the student questions or ask them to explain to me what something is based on their understanding then clarify things that they misunderstood, and emphasize the more important things. At the FBO flight school that I teach, there isn't a structured ground school that's offered, so it's up to the instructor to make sure that the student is well informed, which in itself creates a challenge for us to do this and manage time for the rest of the lesson.
 
Just make sure they know what we are going out to do and review the maneuvers. They gradually get shorter as we progress through the syllabus and are rarely longer than 10 min, most of the time much shorter.

I never received a pre brief by my instructors and I think I missed out. That’s why I make sure I do one with each of my students.
 
I once had a student that would always want to keep it to just, "hold on".
"we are going to need a little more."

good stick though.
 
I always assign something to study beforehand. That way there isn't so much as a pre-briefing, but a pre-reading. We can discuss anything they had trouble with or found interesting prior to actually beginning the lesson.

I find that when they actually do the reading there is a lot less confusion as to what we are doing and the questions are a lot more specific (So WAAS is correcting for atmospheric distortions to get a more accurate distance?), rather than vague questions about a broad subject (So GPS uses satellites?).

I find I can teach more effectively with the time we have that way. Saves the student a lot of cash if they do the studying.
 
I'm a military instructor, and we have a dedicated pre-brief and briefing guide for each type of sortie (aerobatics, instrument, formation, etc.) The guide just covers CRM/ORM/emergencies, though. Still up to the instructor to pre-brief individual maneuvers.

Of course we prebrief each sortie for about 30 minutes, and debriefs last for a little over 30 minutes when the sortie went well, and up to an hour or more on a bad sortie. A civillian CFI probably wouldn't spend that much time every sortie-- It's a lot to devote if you're a CFI and only getting paid by the "flight hour", and it's a lot of money to ask for from the student for "just" ground training if you do charge it.
 
I always assign something to study beforehand. That way there isn't so much as a pre-briefing, but a pre-reading. We can discuss anything they had trouble with or found interesting prior to actually beginning the lesson.

I find that when they actually do the reading there is a lot less confusion as to what we are doing and the questions are a lot more specific (So WAAS is correcting for atmospheric distortions to get a more accurate distance?), rather than vague questions about a broad subject (So GPS uses satellites?).

I find I can teach more effectively with the time we have that way. Saves the student a lot of cash if they do the studying.

:yeahthat: This is kind of how I go. The pre-brief covers:
1. Weather for the day. By pre-solo I have the student able to print all the weather reports listed in the PTS. We then discuss unusual weather patterns in the local area, or in the US since the weather here is normally the same every day. Look at unusual METARS/TAFS/PIREPS using the NOAA Java tool. Discuss possible weather problems with flights in other areas. This also prepares the pilot for the written.
2. Cover the study material for the day from the syllabus. This may be nothing more than going over the daily questions. In some cases, such as stalls/spins, it may involve a more in depth discussion or class. In some cases it may involve a trip to the hanger to look at an uncovered engine, or the aircraft maintenance logs.
3. Review the peformance charts and W&B for the day. Sometimes I may have the student add some cases of oil to see how the W&B turns out... sometimes they have to add oil to keep the aircraft in CG. sometimes in the summer we can not make it out of the short strip we flew into a few weeks ago.
4. Review the maneuvers for the day, and any debrief items from the last flight.
5. Post flight, debrief what went well, what went poorly. What they should think about before the next flight. What they should study for the next flight.
6. I then email them a copy of #5 and stick it in their folder for us to review during the next prebrief.
 
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