Lesson Two Teaching Guide:
Suggested timings for today’s 1 hour class:
Get seated and settled - Class Intro (5 mins)
Read/Listen to Lesson/Story and review Demo board exercises (20 mins)
Students play on individual boards with partners. (25 mins)
Cleanup (5 mins)
Regroup/Debrief for review and awards for daily challenges completed. (5 mins)
Summary: Briefly review of last week’s lesson + chess challenge. Cover today’s story, demo board exercises + review questions, and the daily challenge.
Story + Demo Board Exercises & Puzzles:
Story: King Mateo, Harry, and Harry’s siblings team up to find their missing friends.
Demo board: Demonstrate how the K & P’s move and Capture. Highlight how each piece captures in their own similar, but unique way.
Game Instructions: Pawn Wars! The King vs 8 Puppy Pawns. After two games, give the King his puppy pawn’s. (K+P’s vs P’s). Switch sides after each game.
Game Objective/How to Win:
Objective of the game is to get a player to the opposite side of the board first to win. Both the King and the Pawns should aim to block and capture their opponents pieces so as to prevent them from winning the game. After the completion of a game, each player is to switch roles/sides. This way each student experiences playing with the King and the pawns.
Practical Skills Learned:
How the King and Pawns move, block, and now, capture (+ the 3 steps to capture). Reinforced how to avoid getting “Stuck like Chuck”.
Emotional Skills Learned:
Patience, Self-Control, Team-work
Daily Challenge:
Today, we have two challenges on offer: 1 - Get the King or a Pawn to the other side of the board (opposite you)/the last file before your opponent does = WIN! + OR, 2 - Capture the King! = WIN!+10 bonus points.
Review Questions for Lesson Two: (Suggestions)
What is a diagonal? What is a forward diagonal?
Can you think of a time in the story when this forward diagonal rule helped Harry or King Mateo?
What did King Mateo mean when he said Harry was “Stuck like Chuck?” And how doe this apply to making the correct move in chess, or in life?
What does it mean to Capture a piece? And how do both King Mateo and Harry capture danger on the board? (What are the 3 steps?)
Last Bonus Question: What does it mean to trust your teammates, like King Mateo and Harry trusted each other? Can you think of a time when someone believed in you and it helped you succeed?
Introduce Game:
Who is ready to play Puppy Pawn Wars! And this time King Mateo is allowed to join!
Post Game Debrief:
Review how the game went, if there were any problems/successes. Give prizes/awards for challenges completed (if using incentives).
Piece Abbreviations
Kings = K, Puppy Pawns = P
Piece Values: (Not Yet Discussed)
K = Infinity
P’s = 1 point
Demo Board Setup and Explanations:
Board 1: Today we’ll play Pawn Wars but now we have the ability to capture or catch your opponents pieces and remove them from play. The more pieces you can capture, the easier it will be to make it to the other side of the board and win the game. Also, don’t forget, you can capture King Mateo! And if you do, you automatically win the game!
Pro tips: Remember that pawns become “Stuck like Chuck” when an object (here, a pawn) steps into its direct path. You can do this on purpose to block your opponent’s pawn progression.
And don’t forget that any pawn can choose to jump forward two squares on it’s first move. Then it reverts back to moving one step/square per turn.
Demonstrate a game with captures on the Demo Board.
Board 2: Ask yourself, can any of the pieces here be captured?
Which ones? And how /which piece will capture it?
Bonus points: It’s Whites’ move, which piece should the pawn capture? Which piece can he take without getting captured in response? Keep playing!