Teaching kids chess

I'm a mental health counselor working with incarcerated teens. (It's an interesting job and a majority of these young men turn their lives around.) I've been trying to teach them basic things (very basic openings, end game play, how to promote a pawn with a king versus king, discovered attacks/checks). Any suggestions on what is most imporant to learn for young people who are close to beginners? I figure if they learn basic opening strategy and end game strategy first, they'll be ahead of kids who know nothing about either.

Classic mates Q+K vs K, R+K vs K etc. K+P vs K endings. 

General opening strategy (control the centre etc.)

Opening tricks and traps.

Tactics tactics tacics.

When my father taught me, we started with different variations based around basic principles.
First, we only had a king and the pawns. He taught me all the classical pawn positions, how to connect them, en passant, how to make passed pawns, how to use and manuever with the King, etc.
Then we went to King + Queen plus the pawns. He taught me how to avoid mates and how to walk into a stalemate deliberately to avoid losing.
Then we went to King + Queen + Rooks plus the pawns. He taught me how to use open files, how to break through  and cut the opponents' king from accessing files.
Then we went only King + Minor pieces plus the pawns. The lesson was about how to manuever with the knights and bishops, learn how to use them effectively, how to fork, how to dominate a knight with bishops, limiting its squares, etc.
All of those games went from start to finish, trying to mate (pawn promotions were the same as usual in all games).
This is the way I taught some of my friends to play, and I think it's a lot easier to make them understand simple concepts, rather than play the original game with the full set at first try.

Hello!

I'm having trouble figuring out how to do a new post, so I figured I would add on to this one, since the topic is in the same vein!

We have a bunch of geographically dispersed kids ranging from absolute beginner to more advanced and we are trying to find the right online forum for them to learn, play, etc.  Does Chess.com allow for us to have a group of just our kids and organize tournaments for just our kids?  I don't want to pay for a premium membership unless this is in fact a good fit for our purposes, and was a little concerned by the requirements related to organizing tournaments.  If there are better sites for small groups to coordinate and play chess, I'm all ears.  Also, sorry for the original poster to be tacking on the end like this.  I just don't know why I can't find where to start a new thread!