Burnham Library Chess Club

Meets Thursdays 3:15-4 

when school is in session 

Lesson 1

Objectives:

1. Name squares and chessmen at start of game
2. Set up the chessmen at the start of the game
3. State and apply rules of movement for the pawns

• The main objective of this lesson is to teach the rules of movement for the pawns, including en passant. A little about the board is also taught, as well as how the chessmen are set up at the beginning of the game.
• The pawn game is the game students will play to practice the rules of movement for the pawn. Complete rules for the pawn game are on pages 5 and 6 of the text Comprehensive Chess Course.

1. Outline of lesson:
2. The chess board
3. Setting up the chessmen
4. Using the pawns
5. Student competition with the pawn game
6. Problems that are likely to arise
7. Homework

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Text pages 1-2
Ask a student to tell the number of squares on the board, and how s/he knew there were that many. Point out that there are eight rows and eight columns.

Refer to the colors of the 64 squares as light/dark, not white/black or white/green. (Different boards are different colors.)

Correctly placing the board requires a light square in each player's right-hand corner. The teacher might wish to place some boards incorrectly so some student-pairs must rotate the board in order to have a light square in the right-hand corner.

Text pages 8-10, 13-14
Explain letters/numbers, and that each square has unique name. Have students sitting at the side of the board with low numbers simultaneously point to squares like b4 and h1. Have partners simultaneously point to other squares, like c5 and g8.

For now, the white chessmen are always to be set up on the side of the board with the low numbers, so that the square "h1" is in white's right-hand corner. Eventually, the students will assign "h1" to white's right-hand corner regardless of which side of the board the white chessmen are on, or whether the board has letters or numbers printed on it at all.

The students should consistently use chess notation to communicate their ideas. Questions to students should regularly require students to answer by naming squares on the board.

PAWN GAME 

  Have the students remove the pieces, leaving only the pawns on the board. Demonstrate the pawn rules:

Pawns move only forward, one or two squares from the starting rank, but after that only one square forward. Set up diagram #11 on page 4 and demonstrate the moves that produced this position.

Pawns capture diagonally forward only. Set up the sequences of positions that appear in diagram #15 on page 5, and ask students to name the captures that can be made. Then set up the sequence of positions that appear in diagram #13 on page 4 and repeat.

Notice that diagonally adjacent pawns attack each other simultaneously. If a white pawn can capture a black pawn, then, on its turn, the black pawn can capture the white pawn.

Set up diagram #12 on page 5 to demonstrate blocked pawns. Pawns cannot "push through" each other, nor may they jump.

Set up a position in which a player's pawn captures an opponent's pawn but is itself captured by a second pawn of the opponent, one that is protecting the first. Demonstrate the capture/recapture (white pawn e4, black pawns d5, c6).

Define "controlling squares": chessmen "control" the squares that they attack, not necessarily the squares to which they can move.

Pawns do not control the squares to which they can move. In the capture/recapture position above, the pawn controls the square the opponent's first pawn is on, and the opponent's second pawn controls the same square.

Emphasize that squares are controlled by the men that attack them regardless of the man that happens to be on that square. Have students name squares when they answer questions (e.g., "The white pawn on e4 is attacking black's pawn on d5, and black's pawn on c6 is defending the black pawn on e5").