Assessments - How instructors learn to teach!

So getting into today's topic, we're talking about assessments.

Now, as instructors, assessments are a critical tool that we basically use on a daily basis, whether we realize it or not.

And when we're when I'm working with my CFI candidates, I'm assessments are something I really push as being great tools to help us kind of devise our lessons.

And so that's kind of what I want to talk about.

I want to talk about how we can use assessments, not just for their main purpose, but also how we can use them to kind of work backwards and help us create our lesson plans and how we want to address a certain topic because I know creating lesson plans and especially if you don't have a background in teaching can be quite daunting and is one of the hardest things about preparing for your CFI checkride.

And by using these assessments and really identifying the goals of a given lesson ahead of time, we can work backwards to help us identify how we want to structure that lesson.

So, you know, assessments are such an important thing that if we look in the Aviation Instructor Handbook, there's actually a whole chapter, Chapter 6, devoted to assessments.

Now, I'm not going to sit here and read the whole chapter for you, but there are a couple of things that we can just take a look at.

Number one, just being the introduction.

And we can read here the introduction to Chapter 6 assessments says, Assessment is an essential component of teaching and learning, and it provides the instructor with immediate feedback on the quality of instruction.

And that's a key point we're going to be coming back to here in a second.

It goes on to say, instructors continuously evaluate a learner's performance in order to provide guidance, suggestions for improvement, and positive reinforcement.

All right.

So that's kind of the introduction to assessments.

And as it's stated, it can provide immediate feedback on the quality of instruction.

So when I'm working with my CFI candidates and I'm we're talking about lesson plans and how to structure a certain lesson or whether or not the lesson that they have devised or have given is correct.

achieving the outcome desired, that's where assessments can come in.

And one of the things I recommend all my CFI candidates to do as they're working towards their CFI, not even, I mean, certainly after they finished their CFI certificate and they're out there in the real world teaching, this is what you're going to be doing every day, or at least what you should be doing.

But even as you're working toward it, taking friends or family members out on a flight To practice teaching is a great exercise.

And what I tell everybody is you want to go into a given lesson with this person who presumably has no aviation experience.

Okay, so we're going to be keeping it simple.

But we want to kind of identify ahead of time three to five questions that you are ultimately going to ask this person at the end of the flight.

It doesn't even have to necessarily be a flight.

In fact, it could just be a ground lesson, which could be even more useful.

But three to five questions that...