What a turnout! I'm impressed with how many students are interested and how many parents realize the value of their children learning chess.
I think a great way to learn is to have fun doing it. With that, I'd like to have students actually playing chess as much as possible while at the class on Thursdays. The difficulty for me lies in determining the actual amount of instruction in this one hour period.
There are many basic elements that are essential to progressing in chess and I will introduce a different element every week while also trying to help them remember the ones previously discussed. I'll have to get a feel for how well students receive these fundamentals and apply them to their own playing before getting too far ahead. In any case, the material we discuss or provide will be available at this internet site.
The first chess class at Marshall Academy covered the value of the individual chess pieces:
Queen = 9
Rook = 5
Knight = 3
Bishop = 3
Pawn = 1
These mathematical values should be remembered and considered when making decisions regarding piece trades or exchanges. It may be helpful to compare the values to money. Certainly, it wouldn't be prudent to voluntarily exchange a queen that is worth $9 for a bishop that is worth $3. The player giving up his/her queen would have a material disadvantage after that. If it were a football game score, the player giving up his/her queen would be losing by 6 points.
We also discussed how to properly orient the chessboard before setting up & playing - making sure there is a white square in the lower right corner.
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