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Normally at the beginning of a tutorial I provide the official Gimp documentation. I think for a beginner the Gimp layers documentation can be a bit overwhelming. Instead, let's look at some very basic video tutorials.

Very Basic Layers Tutorial Video

Another Layers Basics Video

GIMP Overview: Layers + Gradients
Try to not catch the cold that the author obviously has! ;-)

GIMP Layers Tutorial
Scroll to the right a bit and you should be able to follow this tutorial right down the page.

TY!!!!! A-Gimping I will go!

More to come MartyGra!

Gimp: using mask layers
by Yves Ceccone
This is a good beginners tutorial. Unfortunately the authow was using an eralier version of Gimp. Below is a few changes I inject that applies to the latest version we have now, 2.6.

"Press on "X" once to make the foreground color black and the background color white. " ( I am not sure why the author uses "D" , in my version "D" only moves the black background to the the foreground but does not move it back when pressed again. Using "X" moves back and forth.)

Follow the changes in red below for this step:
"Now open the "Layer" panel and then Transparency and choose the option "Add alpha channel" by clicking the right mouse button while on the background."

When I got to the "Volume Effect" part I was no longer able to follow along, either there was too many version changes or I needed some caffeine. But the tutorial up to that point is well worth following along with your Gimp software opened and doing it step by step.

From the Gimp users manual. Introduction to layers

I think this will close out the beginners Layers Basics section for now, additional posts may be added if they fit the "beginners" premise.

Simple definitions:
I found this simple definition for Alpha Channel in a book I have from the library called "Beginning GIMP".
Alpha Channel: alpha is a fancy term graphics people use to measure transparency, "Add Alpha Channel" makes the layer capable of using transparency. It doesn't make anything transparent immediately, but if you use "Clear" or tools such as "Eraser" you will create transparent areas instead of white.