Flying a Plane (A single engine aircraft)
The Instruments:
Altimeter: This tells you your altitude, usually in feet.
Attitude indicator/artificial horizon indicator: This has a virtual horizon on it, which tells you if your plane is nose up or nose down. Some AHIs have the degrees printed on it. When you take off you go an average of 15 degrees nose up.
Airspeed indicator: This tells you your airspeed. Depending on the plane, it will have 3 sections, white on green, green, and red. When you are in the white on green, it is safe to lower flaps to slow down for landing.
Turn Co-ordinator: This is a bit like a spirit level. When the plane turns a black ball inside a bar of water will turn with the plane, telling you how steep your turn is.
Heading indicator: This tells you your heading, or bearing in degrees.
Vertical Speed indicator: This tells you in feet per minute how quickly you are ascending or descending.
There are a few more instruments but specific to different aircraft.
And one more is the yoke, which controls all the control surfaces of the aircraft. With this you can make the aircraft pitch up or down, or roll side to side.

Taxiing:
There are two pedals on the floor called the rudder pedals. These control the rudder, a control surface on the tail of the aircraft which can make the aircraft yaw left an right in flight. They also control the wheel on the front of the aircraft, the nose wheel. You can use the nose wheel to turn whilst taxiing. It takes a bit of power to get the aircraft going but once it is off just a little power will do.

Taking off:
As you are taxiing, lower the flaps one notch, as these make the wing surface a little bit bigger, and increase lift. When you reach the threshold of the runway, you advance the throttle to full, use the rudder pedals to keep in a straight line, and when you get approximately to 65 knots, slowly pull back on the yoke, and lift off.

Straight and Level Flight:
To achieve straight and level flight, you must keep the aircraft at cruise speed, which is stated for different aircraft in the aircraft POH/FM (Aircraft manual). You must also keep the nose exactly on the horizon line. To do this you can adjust the trim, which changes the angle of the elevator (the back wing), which lets you keep in level flight without having to really use the yoke.

Landing:
To begin your descent, you must slowly reduce the power, which will change how much air is flowing under the wing, to less than is needed for level flight. As you descend towards the runway, you keep reducing the speed, and lowering flaps. We lowered the flaps for takeoff because it made the wing surface larger. However, if you lower the flaps even more, they will create more drag along the wings, causing the plane to slow down. When you are on final approach, the flaps should be at full, and the power just above idle. As you come over the runway, reduce the speed to idle, and flare, which is lifting up the nose, so the back wheels touch down first and you get to minimum airspeed before you touchdown. Try to keep the plane above the runway for as long as possible before it touches down smoothly. Taxi off the runway and park in your designated parking spot.