At the moment, I currently hold the post of Youth Teaching Materials Officer with the BGA, (despite no longer being a member). My job description is "Produces teaching materials that are suitable for Youth players."

Does anyone have any ideas on what I should produce? I'm aiming to make some workbooks, starting with some theory, then either some little exercises, or some multiple choice questions.

Can't really decide on a topic suitable for sub 15kyu players though....

I have used some of the "Level Up" books to teach my nephew. A sampling of them or a look at the table of contents might give you some ideas for your own materials. (Of course, I'm not suggesting you copy anything, but just suggesting them as a source for age/strength-appropriate ideas.)

The Speed Baduk books are interesting from a pedagogical perspective. Introduce a concept, drill it through problems of increasing difficulty and then at the end of a section have a review where multiple problem types are mixed together and no hints are given*. Very much Teaching 101 stuff, but for kids such an approach might work quite well. One could adapt this into a set of sgf problems emailed to people or whatever. One could definitely do a "Spot the Tesuji" line of stuff like this, each one based on a core theme with problems starting around 20k level and building up to sdk level. The idea of course being that kids work well (better than us adults arguably) with pattern recognition so you want to be drilling them not just showing them one or two examples as you might an adult (which personally I don't think is a great approach anyway but that's a whole other argument).

It'd be a lot of work though.


*Easy Go on the iPad does something similar with its Basic Problem set.

Rather than focus too sharply on the game of go, why not offer a collection of go-like puzzles that kids can choose from? For example, largest-invadeable-corner; or set up a 9x9 board with pro approved fuseki, a la sunjang baduk; or those tiny puzzles (yonro no go, or something?). I'm not suggesting screwing with the rules (as in atari go), just offering alternatives to let them see different facets of this sparkling game.

If you decide to write the rules out in tiny words, try a stone-scoring approach... Offer not filling in territory as a variant for big kids.