Broadway Return

My third visit of this school year to Broadway Junior School in Sunderland proved to be just a enjoyable as February's expedition.

It is a running theme that whenever I go to Sunderland, the sun is always out (with one very notable exception) and today continued the run, with the sunniest North East day for some considerable time.

The children were on excellent form and they all worked very hard for me.

We tested and refreshed their knowledge from my previous visits, analysed various checkmate patterns together and then set the children to work on a written checkmate test of their own.

The test questions were tough one but everyone worked very hard indeed. Seven people shared the top spot as 'champion solvers' with the fine score of 5/6.

We concluded each session with a number of games, during which the children were very keen to impress with their knowledge of controlling the centre and keeping the king safe by castling.

We even introduced the en passant rule but that will take a little longer to grasp!

It is simply wonderful to work such a very enthusiastic group of people and, as usual, I was sad to see the time fly by too quickly and turn once again from chess time to home time almost in the blink of an eye.

Thank you to all at Broadway and to my friend and colleague Ms Hastie, who has supported chess and the CSC for many years.