Dr. Alexey Root taught the beginners how to checkmate with a king and two rooks against a king. The students volunteered the legal moves for the black king while Dr. Root maneuvered the white rooks on the demonstration board. Then students practiced the checkmate pattern with partners. The intermediate students learned the king and queen checkmate from one of their colleagues, who taught it the same way Dr. Root had in the fall.
Dr. Alexey Root informed Denton High School chess club students that this coming Thursday, February 27, there will be a visit to the University of North Texas chess club. Then two of the students who played in the Texas Scholastic Championship showed their games to their fellow club members.
Dr. Alexey Root taught Battleship Chess from Children and Chess: A Guide for Educators to all three St. Vincent’s School chess groups, as each group visited her at different times. The advanced students additionally guessed what moves were played in a classmate’s tournament game.
Dr. Alexey Root taught the beginners how the Q, R, and B moved. Then the beginners tried this exercise from Read, Write, Checkmate: Enrich Literacy with Chess Activities.
Have pairs of students get out a board, a white queen, a black rook, and a black bishop. Each piece should be placed on its starting square. Start the white queen on d1, the black rook on h8 or a8, and the black bishop on f8 or c8. White moves first. . . . After trying this from both sides, ask students whether it was easier to play white or to play black.
Three of the five players who participated in the Texas Scholastic February 8-9 showed chess games from that tournament to one or two other students. The Denton High School students analyzed the games together and with the help of Dr. Alexey Root.
Dr. Alexey Root and chess sponsor Fred Mueller took five Denton High School players to the Texas Scholastic Championship in Houston Feb. 8-9. Results are posted here.
Dr. Alexey Root taught how pawns move and capture to the beginners at Greenhill School. She did not cover en passant. Then the beginners played the Pawn Game from Dr. Root’s book Science, Math, Checkmate: 32 Chess Activities for Inquiry and Problem Solving. For the intermediate and advanced groups, Dr. Root had the students play Battleship Chess, a drill from her first book Children and Chess: A Guide for Educators.
Dr. Alexey Root is presenting two free seminars, sponsored by the Texas Chess Association, at the State Scholastic in Houston Feb. 8 and 9. The seminars are at 12:45 each day and in room 329. Ten participants in each seminar will each win a free copy of Thinking with Chess: Teaching Children Ages 5-14.
Dr. Alexey Root showed the video of Bill Gates losing to Magnus Carlsen. Then the Denton High School chess club students analyzed the game in pairs to figure out where White’s mistakes were. Then Dr. Root led a whole class discussion which included points from the Chess Improver blogposting about this game.
Dr. Alexey Root had each group (beginner, intermediate, advanced) work on worksheets and basic endgame checkmates while she tested one or two students at a time on basic endgame checkmates (such as king and queen vs. king). The worksheets for the beginners and intermediates were from Thinking with Chess: Teaching Children Ages 5-14. The advanced students solved checkmates in one from kidchess.com.
Eleven students attended Denton High School chess club on Friday, January 24, 2014. Eight students solved the “three-on-three” pawn problem from Science, Math, Checkmate: 32 Chess Activities for Inquiry and Problem Solving then played chess for fun. Three students went across the hall to train for the State tournament, coming up Feb. 8-9. 2014.
Dr. Alexey Root asked the beginners if a black rook on a8 could stop five white pawns, on White’s second rank, from promoting if White moved first. The beginners thought not, so Dr. Root called on them to make the pawn moves and she made the rook moves. Then the beginners experimented in pairs with pawns all on the third rank, all on the fourth rank, all on the fifth rank, and with pawns adjacent to each other or not.
