Our Gwendolyn Brooks Elementary School Chess Club (GBCC) in Aurora, IL now has 60 members (school has about 850 students this year). I would like to know how our size of membership compares to other elementary school chess clubs. Might it be possible that we have one of the largest club memberships in the US for an elementary school?
Gary Raymond
GBCC Coordinator
The only experience I have is just what I have seen (I don’t have any details). That is an Elementary club in Huntsville, AL, that probably has about 20-30 kids involved. In other words, 60 members sounds pretty good!
There are two schools here in the Raleigh/Durham area of NC where there are 40-50 kids that played in recent USCF rated tournaments, so I am guessing that each of them could have 60+. I think this would be true for a few of the schools near Charlotte too. Now if someone could just figure out the way to keep them playing past the elementary level at that rate!!!
A number of years ago the media specialist at Calvert Elementary School in Lincoln Nebraska was running lunchtime tournaments during the winter.
1st and 2nd grade students played on Mondays, 3rd grade on Tuesdays, etc.
Over 25% of the students in the school were participating in those unrated tournaments. Every available table and half of the floor space in the media center had chess games at it. They had about 15 chess sets in the media center, and had to borrow extras from the Lincoln Chess Foundation.
When I have taught in-school chess classes (as part of the math curriculum), about 25% of the students developed sufficient interest in chess to participate in an after-school or weekend event at the school.
I’ve heard about similar results at other schools, so my guess is that a really well-developed elementary school chess program should be able to involve about 25% of the students at the school.
My experience is that many elementary students enjoy having a chess club, since most elementary schools don’t have any other clubs or activities.
I run the clubs at the two middle schools because I wanted to catch every student that was being fed into the system and I could grow them as they went from 5th grade to high school. As a result, the first of the year I usually get 20-25 students in the club. As the year goes on attendance decreases as they learn of other clubs and activities. Now at the 5th-6th grade middle school I’m averaging about 10 players.
Some of these will come back into the fold as they get to the 7-8th grade school, but once again, as the year goes on other activities take over. Right now my best 8th grade player isn’t coming to chess club because it’s track season!
Get rid of those bonecrunching physiscal sports and they’ll see what fun chess can be! 
Radishes
The local master wants me to run the un-rated scholastic tournament for this local school. The school has 8 elementary schools (9th being built), with 150 as the total of active chess players. They want a tournament like the NBA has, with 2 out of 3 games going onto the next round. The local master is the scholastic coach for one school, the rest of the scholastic coaches have very little understanding of the USCF. Like knowing what is a flag fall, or knowing what is a flag on a analog clock. The tournament will be 4 students from each school, the rest of the players would have to be cut from each scholastic coach.
Can anyone tell me how to tell 150 students, 8 scholastic coaches, the parents, how they should act during their first tournament? Only have till May 21, 2005, think I see a problem. How can one man teach so many people in such a short time?
We’ve got about 50 kids in our K-5 elementary school club.
Two things you can do.
First, a 1-page flyer at the registration desk in 10-point type with the basic rules on it would work.
Then those you think need to be especailly reinforced should be printed in bigger type and plastered on the walls and the doors of the playing hall.
There is always time before the first round starts for players to read these things if they really want to. if they don’t, I know their opponents will point it out to them when they mess up.
I went to a regular tournament this weekend where the TD even taped flyers to the door telling players which doors they could use and which ones they couldn’t.
Another thing done at this tournament was to post flyers with a lot of rules right next to the area where the results were recorded and again where the pairings were posted, whcih happened to be the same spot.
It isn’t going to be easy, I know, but get plenty of help to answer questoins so you can do the directing and not have to be bothered with so many questions.
Good luck!
Radishes
Thanks Radishes:
If I did not shave my head I would be pulling my hair out during the event.
Its’ not going to be easy, with everything there is a learning curve. With time, the players that stay with it a life time will understand the social standards of tournament life. Its’ just a tournament to keep the best players wanting to do better, wanting to advance past the simple levels they have done.
Give a short speech before round 1.
Tell them specific rules that you expect to be followed.
We alway cover things like touch move, where the bathrooms are, how to ask permission to leave the playing room to use the restroom. How to request help in determining a winner, how to report a score to scorers table, what to do in case of disagreement, keep notation (4th grade up), expectation of good sportsmanship, no need to talk, shake hands, begin.
Come back before round 2 and let them know what they did well.
Let them know what things you noticed that were problems from round 1.
After round 2, have a talk with player and their coach (early in season) detailing how they are falling short of expectation.
After round 2, ask child and parent to leave if they continue to not meet expectations. They will learn quickly.
Good Luck
Well the scholastic coaches are having a hard time understanding what is a flag fall. The tournament will not have a clock, its’ a nock out tournament of best of 2 out of 3. Its going to be more like a NBA play-off tournament. Its not going to be a USCF ratable tournament.
If having the tournament be just like a USCF event, there would be one word - your fired. I know its not going to be USCF standards, as the tournament format is a non-standard format. There are no clocks, no score sheets and no trophies. Just a tournament to keep the higher grade players wanting to play and form a club in the middle school.
There is a choice I have, be the director and have lower standards. Or have someone not understand what a flag fall is be the director.
The after-school chess club I conduct at a local elementary school has some 40 kids at the start of the year. I limit it to 40, because I can’t begin to teach and mentor more than that. I need college student helpers to even manage that many.
I am seriously thinking about limiting it next year to “The Golden Dozen”–12 kids I know are serious about becoming better players.
Some parents, including teachers at the school, use chess club as a way of babysitting their kids after school for an hour with a little enrichment. Sometimes the kid is not that interested in chess, and that creates discipline problems. If your program is very big, you are probably doing some babysitting.
Chesscoach, it depends on what you’re trying to accomplish with your program.
If you want to build a winning team of serious players, focus on your Golden Dozen. That’s what most chess coaches do.
If you’re trying to build a scholastic chess program, expose lots of gradeschool kids to chess, expand the diversity (gender, racial, social) of chess at your school, and provide a valuable outlet for bright kids, then I encourage you to keep your numbers high and figure out a way to run a large program.
Either of these is a legitimate option.
I chose the latter option. We’re now at 60 kids (out of a school of 350) in a before-school chess program. It’s taken major effort to get enough adults in to coordinate and do crowd control, but it can be done. We’ve got about 6 grownups every week, including a paid tutor who does small-group work with intermediate players. Everyone in the group is playing chess, and everyone is behaving. We get a little loud at times, but we ARE on task.
Are we doing a bit of babysitting? Sure we are! But they’re all playing chess, they’re all learning, and they’re all enjoying it, so who cares?
Our own golden dozen? We have a separate evening program for them. Except it’s not a golden dozen any more, thanks to some inflow from the morning program.
There is an Elementary school in our area, Western. MA, that does a chess tournament at lunch. The problem is that free time for the kids at lunch is only 20 minutes. At my daughter’s Elementary school, I`started a chess club one day a week after school. We have 28 kids who regularly play and are now doing our second club tournament. Here’s the problem I’ve encountered here.
Due to the pressure of statewide testing, MCAS, there is extremely limited time to teach chess. The irony is that chess will improve academic performance more than the test prep they now give the kids in those spare moments of the school day. So, while I would be willing to push here in MA for mandatory or elective chess classes, it just isn’t going to fly. I taught high school in Louisiana at a private school that offered chess as an elective course taught by a math professor. Good stuff with good results.
My apologies for being so long winded. I’d appreciate feedback from anyone who has atempted to have chess introducted as a course offering at ay level, K-12.
Brian Lafferty
While one may believe that chess will improve academic performance, the evidence that I know of is thin. In a recent CL issue, an article about scholastic chess mentioned a dissertation that presented evidence on this point. It was described as maybe the first evidence on the question.
Do you know of other evidence that chess really will make the kids smarter – especially on these serious standardized tests? I think that a clear argument, supported with evidence, will attract attention. Many schools are willing to try anything that is within the rules to get their scores up.
gardinerchess.com/publicatio … /ciers.pdf
uschess.org/scholastic/sc-research.html
In a rational world all it wold take is a logicl argument based on the above research. In benchmark standards land of contemporary education, the paranoia of testing doesn’t allow for rational debate. 