Friday, February 19, 2010

6th Practice Report

NO PRACTICE ON THE 26TH
There is no school next Friday, so there won’t be any chess club. Enjoy your week off! (I’m sure going to!)

VOLUNEERS FOR MARCH 5TH
We didn’t have as many volunteers as I would have liked today, and I recognize I haven’t been giving a ton of direction to the folks who have been so good about showing up. So for the next practice, I’m asking for volunteers to make a special effort to sign up:

http://www.mysignup.com/burroughschess0305

This is a different format for signing up than we’ve had before, and you can sign up to volunteer for a role before practice (before 3:00), during practice (3:00-4:20), after practice (4:20-4:30) or all three of them. I’m trying this because as chess club continues on, things are getting a little more chaotic, and with this number of kids, I think we need all the help we can get.

Thanks again for signing up.

PRACTICE
Among the things we went over on the practice was:
1. Our Trophies! – The kids from our first tournament who brought home two team trophies presented them to Mr. Cadotte in a short ceremony.
2. Standings – We started posting standings for our three divisions (K-1, 2-3, 4-5) so kids could see who they were challenging.
3. Four-move checkmate – We mostly learned this for defensive purposes. Ask you kids what the signs are that their opponent is going to try and pin them in a quick checkmate (answer: bishop moves our three squares and queen moves out two)

Other than that, there was a lot of playing.

CHECK WITH YOUR CHILD

Please take some time in the next week to ask your child if they enjoy playing chess at chess club. One way to get a sense is to ask them how many game they played. If they aren’t finishing at least two and probably three games, they may not really want to play. Kids who avoid playing end up being disruptive. With that many kids, we can’t have volunteers shadowing just one child. Starting next practice, we’ll be contacting parents if this behavior continues.

THANKS
We only have two more practices and two more tournaments left (including tomorrow’s). Thanks so much for helping make our trial chess club season a success.

Sincerely,
John

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