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.