Training Day Tour: Newcastle

Our CSC Training Day tour started today with a trip to Newcastle; specifically, Room 2.38 of the King George VI Building, Newcastle University.

It is not often I find myself travelling North for chess activities but today brought a very welcome exception, as I met with a fabulous group of delegates - including the legendary Tim Wall - for a thoroughly enjoyable day.

CSC is hoping to spread to Newcastle in the near future and this training day made some important initial steps.

Highlights of the day included introducing the delegates to mini-games...

...working on the benefits of chess...

...enjoying a game of Maharajah Chess as an introduction to chess variations as a full-class activity...

...and a welcome outing for Dice Chess, which acts as a great leveller and is an ideal way to encourage children to play the stronger players in a class.

Thank you, everyone!

If you would like to enrol for one of our training days then please head for the CSC training page.

Y1s and Y2s

Today we managed to squeeze in bonus sessions with the Y1s and Y2s of Sacred Heart.

Apart from being able to play some great mini-games, the young stars also managed to use coordinates perfectly and proved themselves skilled at mathematics (8 x 8 = 64 squares!).

The picture shows the Y1s and their teacher, Mrs Spillane, who was the driving force behind setting up chess at Sacred Heart back in 2011 and has been a very active supporter of the CSC ever since.

Whale Hill Champions

Farrell and Lily shared the Whale Hill title in the UK Chess Challenge, thus adding to their rapidly-growing amount of chess silverware.

Great achievements by fabulous students.

Teesside Megafinal Full!

Boom!

The Teesside Megafinal is now full and the online entry facility has closed.

To reach full capacity with a week and a half to go is unheard of and 150 entries is a record number for a Teesside junior tournament.

We have players from Under-7 all the way to Under-18.

It is going to an incredible day.

Thank you, everyone, for your marvellous support.

From the Archive (18)

Back to 1995 - and the Easter Chess Extravaganza.

Great times, great people.

CSC Training Days

The CSC Training Tour resumes soon, with the Newcastle date happening two weeks from now.

Our training days are open to ALL teachers, TAs, parents, vaguely-interested passers-by...

Book now to avoid disappointment.

Broadway Checkmate

Today I visited Broadway Junior School in Sunderland for their third Chessday of the year.

It had been two months since my last visit and after first testing the three classes of Year 4s to see how much they had remembered from my previous visits it was time at last to tackle the trickiest of all chess pieces: the king.

The children were keen to come out to the front to demonstrate their chess knowledge and to learn about the special properties of the king.

It was almost time to set up the board to play with all the pieces for the first time, but first we had a demonstration of how a king would move through the classroom; one step at a time!

On my previous Chessdays we had played mini-games but today we moved on to the games with all of the pieces. This time the children were playing for checkmate!

The first group of Year 4s - pictured here together with their teacher and long-term chess supporter, Lisa Hastie - set a high standard for the next two classes to follow.

Incidentally the Year 5s, with whom I worked last year, are now running their own drop-in sessions to help and teach the Year 4 players and this year the school entered the Delancey UK Chess Challenge for the first time. It's all happening at Broadway!

Everyone worked very hard on the day and hopefully I will be able to work with my Broadway stars again in the near future.