For the third meeting of the 2011-2012 Denton High School chess club, I taught about en passant using ideas from Science, Math, Checkmate: 32 Chess Activities for Inquiry and Problem Solving and from my forthcoming book Thinking with Chess: Teaching Children Ages 5-14. I planned to also teach en passant to my Denton Public Library class, but only three students (six year old twins and their mom) showed up.
Eleven students attended Denton High School chess club on Friday, September 23. Dr. Root taught material from her forthcoming book Thinking with Chess: Teaching Children Ages 5-14. Specifically, she covered patterns in back-rank and smothered checkmates and provided practice problems.
On Friday, September 23, five children and three adults attended the second meeting of "Thinking with Chess" for ages 5-14. One of the adults did not bring a child, but said he was attending because he wants to avoid losing to five year olds at the Monday night Denton Chess Club. He said my instruction on how to restrict the king in endgame checkmates was helpful.
Friday, September 16, was the first meeting of the Denton High School chess club for the 2011-2012 academic year. There were mostly returning chess club members among the 16 students who attended. There were also three former Denton High School students, now at Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science (TAMS), who decided to drop in for a few games.
Friday, September 16, was the first afternoon of my free chess classes at the Denton Public Library. The youngest students were six-year-old twins, and the oldest were two moms who stayed and participated. In all, nine students practiced two challenges (Classify and Pattern Recognition) from my upcoming book Thinking with Chess: Teaching Children Ages 5-14 (Mongoose Press, 2012).
At the Denton High School Open House Night on September 12, 2011, known as “Bronco Night,” teachers opened their classrooms to parents. Since chess club sponsor Fred Mueller was busy meeting parents of his pre-Calculus and Calculus students, I volunteered to be the responsible adult for his math and chess club table in the main hallway. Chess club (and math club) positioned our table near Tennis and Choir.
I am teaching another series of chess classes at the Denton Public Library, North Branch. Classes are for children ages 5-14, start September 16 (2-3:30 p.m.), and run for six Fridays. This series of classes is called Thinking with Chess. The challenges and puzzles in the Thinking with Chess classes emphasize skills important for academics, such as classifying, pattern recognition, decoding, creating, and predicting.
I attended the first meeting of the UT Dallas chess club for 2011-2012. I spoke about the Chess Online courses.. There is still time to register, as the courses officially begin October 24. Although many students who take the Chess Online courses are not chess players, each semester I have a handful of chess team members as students too.
My Brilliant Brain, Make me a Genius, features grandmaster Susan Polgar
MonRoi Inc is very thankful to Dr. Dirk De Ridder, Chairman of FIDE’s Technical Commission and the Organizing Committee of the Politiken Cup in Copenhagen, Denmark for assisting a chess player, who we encourage to continue his world travels and chess. We are posting this exchange, in order to aid the tournament organizers, should similar questions ever arise.
Dr. Alexey Root will present August 13, 2011 at the Denton Writers League. Her topic is "non-fiction writing niches." Her presentation will draw from her own experiences writing about chess and education. The presentation begins at 10:30 a.m.
My review of Director Lynn Hamrick’s Chess Kids DVD was posted June 30, 2011 on Chess Life Online.
