This is Paul Swaney a.k.a. Think Ahead presenting another article about teaching chess in a slow and steady manner.
In my last article, Walk Before You Run, I addressed many of the pitfalls of teaching young learners too much too soon. I proposed some fun and easy pre-chess games to allow the students to get their hands on the pieces, but not quite playing a real game of chess.
I think if you do this in the right way your students will have a better understanding of the rules of the game, while learning some basic strategies which will help them once they put it all together.
Moving on to teaching the other pieces. I would like to present a fun game that helps students get a good understanding of the knight moves and captures. Many students, when first learning the knight, have a tough time understanding the piece due to its unique feature of "jumping" over pieces, and only capturing the piece that is on the last square where it lands -- as well as changing colors every time it moves.
One easy learning game is called late knight snack. You can see that the pawns are placed in an alternating pattern across the 4th and 5th ranks. The white knight starts on g1, and the black knight on g8. In this game only the knights move, and the players must take turns just as in a real chess game.
The first person to capture all of the opponent's pawns wins. Note: If say the white knight were to capture the black pawn on h4, the black pawn on g5 CANNOT capture the knight since in this game the only piece that moves is the knight.
Late Knight Snack!
Moving on to the bishop.
First, I like to show how one single bishop can stop an entire chain of pawns. Then I trick the students by setting up two black pawns on e7 and d7, and give them a white bishop on h2.
I say, "you just saw how one bishop can easily defeat four or five pawns all by itself, here I just have two pawns and you get to be the bishop, and you can even move first!"
Well, the students think that this will be extrememly easy, but many of them struggle to stop the two pawns before one of them reaches the back rank. Here is a great time after several tries from a variety of students to show them how easy it is by centralizing the bishop, since it controls 13 squares from the center, as well as introducing the idea of "zugzwang," where every move you have to make is a bad move.
One Bishop vs Two Pawns
By seperating the pieces and giving the students a chance to manipulate them on a chess board, you are giving them a focused task so that when they bring it all together they will not be overwhelemed by the variety of pieces and movements. This will give them confidence once they start to play "real" chess, and help to keep the students motivated to learn.