Learning Chess Workbook Step 4 The Step-by-Step Method

The step-by-step method has been developed by Rob
Brunia and Cor van Wijgerden to teach children to play chess. A large
number of schools and chess clubs in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany,
Switzerland and Austria use this method for their chess lessons.
This
method consists of six steps. Each step is accompanied with an
instruction book with the teaching material to be used by the trainer /
teacher / parent and a workbook with exercises for the students.
Step 4
The
difficulty level of the material from the fourth step is higher than in
step three. That is mainly the consequence of the increasing number of
moves needed to solve the exercises.
Most of the topics require
solutions which are 2½ move deep: White plays, Black answers, White
plays, Black answers and Whites scores. That is why a good command and
application of the topics from the third step are absolutely necessary.
Tactics
are dominated in a large degree by the preparatory move. The immediate
attack does not work yet and a preparatory action is necessary. All
existing preparations are dealt with: luring, eliminating the defence,
chasing, aiming and clearing.
Gradually, the positional aspects
are going to play more and more (a modest) part in the games of the
fourth step students. The best way to introduce this kind of vague
topics is to use the endgame.
The lessons about material
advantage and endgame strategy contain many strategic issues.
Furthermore, the lesson about the weak pawns makes students aware to be (
a bit more ) careful while playing with their pawns.
The same
applies to the lesson about the opening. Anyway, it remains best to deal
with the positional factors while commenting the games of the students.