1st Practice

Q: What do you call 70 kids, a dozen volunteers, forty game boards and 1280 black and white game pieces?
A: I was thinking “Burroughs Chess Club,” but your answer may be right too….

The first Burroughs Chess Club practice will take place at 3:00 this Friday (Jan 8th) in the Burroughs lunchroom. We have 70 kids signed up and plenty of volunteers to help. Thanks everyone for such an exciting kickoff! Below you’ll find details about it, but feel free to send any followup questions to BurroughsChess@Gmail.com.

Setup for Volunteers
If you’re volunteering to help and you can be there a little early, please help set up at 2:40 PM this week. Once we get the process down, I anticipate setup starting later.

Getting to the Cafeteria
Chess club members will be released to the lunchroom by their teachers. Mr. Cadotte will announce this on Friday and we have provided a list of students to the teachers, but if there is any confusion, a child can tell their teacher that is where they should be. Mpls Kids can also report directly to Chess Club.

Snack
Sorry, we can’t provide a snack. If you want your child to have one, please send one with them to school. They can eat it in the cafeteria as they get settled.

Kids Check-in (3:00-3:10)
We’ll have a table where the kids can check in. We’ll have nametags created for them, or they can create one themselves. We’ll also ask them whether they are a beginner or not and place a sticker on their nametag accordingly.

Announcements (3:10-3:15)
We’ll have a very short talk with some announcements, basic rules of behavior and dividing them into the beginners and player groups.

Beginners Group (3:15 – 4:15)
For this first practice, all beginners will sit at a couple of tables and each two kids will have a chessboard and pieces. Most of the hour will consist of lessons and games designed to teach the kids how the pieces move:
1) setting up the back row pieces
2) movement of the rook, bishop, queen and king
3) play a game that moves just those pieces
4) movement of the knight
5) game that moves those pieces
6) movement of the pawns
7) game about moving pawns
8) first game of chess?

Ideally we’ll have the kids rotate around a little so they aren’t always playing against the same person during that hour.

Players Group (3:15 – 4:15)
After announcements, all players will pair up, get a board and pieces, play, clean up and report their results to the check-in table. Then they’ll repeat that throughout the hour. We won’t track rankings for this first practice, but I’d like to get them in the habit, and we can use the results to help pair appropriate players to play each other in the future.

At about 3:40 or so I’d like to conduct a short lesson on some aspect of the game that non-beginners can use during their games. For the first practice, it will be “climbing the ladder” to a checkmate.

Cleanup (4:15-4:20)
Kids will put both black and white pieces for their games into a zip bag and bring the bag and the board to the check-in table.

Pickup Kids (4:20 – 4:30)
Please plan on picking up your child by 4:20. We cannot supervise children that are not picked up after 4:30.

That’s all I got. We’ll try a few things for this first practice, cross our fingers and make adjustment for the next couple of practices. I’m very excited (and a little intimidated) by the interest and talent that I’ve already seen.

THANKS again for your participation and we’ll see you on Friday.

Sincerely,
John