How do you crack the nut of taking an elementary school chess club (run by the PTA) from just friendly play to becoming rated?
If ratings depend upon playing other rated players, do we have to import them from somewhere? Our principal does not want to allow students from other schools to become members, even though we have had requests since other schools’ chess clubs were full.
We have about 70 kids in the chess club. None are presently USCF members.
Also, I just heard that Chess-Live is no longer a membership benefit. That is unfortunate, as the kids want to play online. The Chess Life magazine is useless to most kids in grades 1 to 6, but some would play online.
The only way to get half the (70 total scholastic players) students to be active members, would be having tournaments. It is not the whole issue of the scholastic player leaving the USCF. Its’ the parents finding little reason to renewal a membership, when feeling there is little support from the scholastic chess coach, or very little (or none) in the way of any scholastic events in the local area. Parents, not the scholastic players per say would find a problem of a scholastic player and a adult in the same event. Have seen a grandmother drag their grandchild out of a event, force the scholastic player to withdraw because they are or have been paired up with adults.
Must get (parent and scholastic student) both active, the scholastic student and the parents of a scholastic student. Having (70) scholastic players, have a non-USCF event just for the parents. Let the parents get some tournament action, just more events for the scholastic students in total. The parent and the child would have some common ground when they interact with each other. As they will interact when they talk about what did happen at a tournament, if the parent had a chess tournament of their own, would give greater feed back between parent and child.
Isn’t the schoolmates magazine avaialble any longer?
As to getting your students rated, they would need to become USCF youth, or scholastic members, (Alternatively, if you have a tournament which consists of players from your school only, you could get your students a Junior Tournament Player (JTP) tournament membership. These are free to those from the same school. Your school would still need to become an affilate, however), your school would need to become a USCF affiliate, and then you could host a USCF rated tournament. You, or somone within the school would also need to sign up to be either a certified TD or a Certified Chess Coach.
Once again, you do not have to be a member of USCF to get a “rating.”
If you want to have USCF ratings, you need to have the students join and go to tournaments. or on the flip side, you could become a club director for USCF (you would have to be a member yourself) simply by reading the rule book. I think you also have to have a USCF tournament director sign for you, too.
But why bother? You can establish your own rating system at your school. Everyone starts out with a rating of 500 and then as they play in your tournament they are given rating points that diverge based on their win/loss record. In my area, the state next door has their own rating system, and the local chess club in my state has their own rating system, and a person can be in both systems and have different ratings! Now I must admit both of these systems run tournaments using WinTD which can assign ratings to students.
But even without the software you can start the kids out with a rating of 500 and go from there.
School Mates was discontinued in 2003. Instead, Scholastic Members receive six issues of Chess Life, and those issues have a scholastic insert in them.
Whether this is an improvement over School Mates is hard to say and may be more of a political issue than an editorial one.
School Mates never became the magazine those of us who helped get it approved (I was the chair of the USCF Scholastic Committee that year) hoped it would be, it tended to concentrate on articles about kids rather than instructional material aimed at kids. More than a few parents and coaches have told me that their kids never read it.
Based on the turnover rates for scholastic members, I’d say the change has had little or no impact.
I don’t think that Chess Life has much interest for elementary school kids, not even with the supplement.
Material for instruction at the scholastic level would be fabulous. I have mostly created my own from a wide variety of sources. I just cut and paste boards and pieces using Paint Shop Pro and make up lessons for handouts, and use a demo board.
Also, online play is something the kids are interested in.
Did read some of the ‘School Mates’, for some reason it was sent to the affiliates. Since the federation does not send ‘School Mates’ to scholastic players, it is not a great lose for the parents and the coaches. As there is other form of newspaper or magazine, that can be used in a bird cage.
If there was instructional material, it would be a great way to teach players with ratings from 100 - 600. Never did see any study material on notations, one of the major problems with scholastic students. Never did see any study material on time controls, what equipment to bring to a event. Nothing for the parents, as parents also would be reading the same material as their child.
School mates did show nice pictures, of scholastic players and the coaches. It was designed as ‘hero worship’.
Ever thought of a lesson of king and pawn vs king. Never did see any issue of ‘School Mates’ or ‘Chess Life’ ever deal with something as simple as this. For a scholastic student at the most basic level, should be learning this simple problem from the start. There are a number of scholastic students, some that have been playing chess for over a year. That have no understanding how to promote a pawn into a queen.
It would be best, as some of the younger scholastic player were not at the reading grade of ‘School Mates’ when it was published; even for the scholastic members, some are not at the reading grade for ‘Chess Life’. It would be better to write the articles for the parents, if the scholastic students are at a very young age. With a article over king and pawn vs king, could be writen for the parents so they can teach their own child. Articles like this, would make the interaction between parent and child a greater bond.
The major problem with ‘scholastic chess’, its not the problem with the scholastic students. Its’ not the problem of not having an interaction between scholastic student to a scholastic student. Its not the problem of not having an interaction between scholastic student and the scholastic chess coach. The problem is the interaction between scholastic student and their parents. As the way the federation writes or talks about the parents, if they have time to talk about the parent. As the way the federation thinks of parents, are the people that use their credit card to pay for the scholastic membership, or the people that pay the entry fee at the scholastic event. Other then that, the federation never try to build a bond between the parent and child with chess.
So if you’re working on the articles, try to write the issues for the parents. Then the parents would be building from the articles, how they would be teaching their child how to play chess.
If you had read my reply a bit more thoroughly, you would have seen me talk about other ways to get a “rating.” I understand the difference between a USCF and a non-USCF rating, and I always differentiate between them
You can run a tournament using WinTD without any USCF rated players and it will calculate ratings, which can then be used in any manner you wish. HOWEVER, you obviously can’t advertise the tournament as being USCF rated.
I always have to explain to my students that the “ratings” they get whenever they play in out-of-state non-USCF tournaments are different from thee rating the local chess club gives them when they play in the club’s scholastic non-rated tournament, and doesn’t count at all towards their USCF rating, if they have one at all. Having separate rating sytems like this may be a bit confusing at first, but being smart, they learn to deal and are happy that they don’t have to be USCF members to get any kind of a “rating” at all!
Does that help clear things up for you? It makes sense to my 8th graders!
Yes, I have used the Pawn and King vs. King lesson in the fall strategy sessions I limited to grades 4-5-6 so that I had a manageable number of kids to teach (19, vs. 70 in the entire club).
I handed out written lessons on it for them to take home, and e-mailed them to the parents.
However, I didn’t really focus on the excellent point you made: to work the relationship with the parents. That is a great idea and I will use it for inspiration for an article on the chess club in the upcoming PTA newsletter I need to write by Friday. Thanks for the idea!!
Then, I need to keep pumping out the lessons, chess problems, etc. to produce a handout each week as I did this fall (we start up for spring shortly). As several folks have said, it would be great if the USCF published such material so we could just use it.
The reason for the relationship between parent and child, if the parent is a established player of many years: the scholastic student performs better (stronger) then their age group. With children in the K - 3, most are learning to read and write – coaches should be working with the parents on notations and simple problems (pawn and king vs king). Is it not one of the best goals, for building a bond between parent and child.
Even with the older students, if the parents are active in understanding more then (how to set up board, how all the material move on board, ect) the basic skills. That would give some social interaction between the parents and the child, something that can last a life time.
I agree that those whose parents play and appreciate chess create our best players. We have all kinds.
While I don’t want to accuse anyone, sometimes I have the impression that some parents view chess club as free babysitting – those parents are not interested in chess at all.
And I don’t understand at all when some volunteers say that all they can help with is crowd control, check in /check out of kids, and then a year later they have still not picked it up (despite my offers to lend videos, books, etc.). I mean parents whose kids know much more chess than they do, and they think that’s just fine. I appreciate their help in volunteering, but come on!
I asked the kids if anyone had a parent who was a member of USCF, and only my son raised his hand.
So we also need some sort of parent club or instruction – at least I will give more explicit requests that they work through the handouts I send home with their kids. (Just what they all need – more homework!)
Was at a scholastic level (1980’s), noticed when the other players father came to the board with the car keys in his hand – never did lose any of those games. Always used all my time on the clock, even used time up on the clock, when in my mind know what my next move would be. The other player would play so much faster just to get the game done.
The father(s) with the car keys, being more of a help for me to win then they were for their son. When having a father like that, can understand why a scholastic student would drop out.
Dorothy:
Most scholastic students are not 16 years old with a car. If the parent becomes burned out with chess, would not drive their child to any events, without going to any events – would not renewal their childs USCF membership. If the USCF gives greater importance for the family, not just the scholastic student. Then it could be a way to change the mind set of the parents.
If the federation could write articles on scholastic students, as a family unit – could see improvements with their (parent and child) chess skills – the improvements of building a stronger (perventing drug use and crime)family unit. Most parents would enjoy their child learning chess skills, as the skills would be used in other fields other then chess per say. Scholastic students will become teenagers, they will find free time to do something. They could be learning skills of chess, that can be used in the skills of life.
They could use the free time (drug use, crime) in a negitive way, like telling their parents how they are going to be a first time father or mother at 16. If only the articles of ‘Chess Life’ place importance of the scholastic students as a family unit, oh well.
Dorothy, I think the question you have to answer is whether USCF ratings are of value in your program at this time.
If not, then feel free to set up your own rating system.
It doesn’t have to be as mathematically intricate as the USCF’s system, either, because especially for young beginners that much precision just isn’t needed. You only need to sort the kids into groups of approximately equal strength and/or understanding of the rules. Those who improve should be able to move up to a higher group quickly enough so that they don’t get bored.
I think many kids get pushed into formal competitive chess too early. (Yes, chess has its share of ‘Little League Parents’.)
Most scholastic members play in 2 or 3 events and then drop out. For those individuals, I don’t know that having a USCF rating has any value and the competitiveness might increase the dropout rate.
Those who are ready for outside competition should be easy to determine and when they’re ready, then you can worry about hosting USCF rated events or taking them to events run by others.
When I ran in-school scholastic programs, the most important rule I had was this: It has to be fun to be involved in chess! It helped that I generally took over their math class for a few days, so I was a change from the usual routine. Of course I was teaching them skills that are not all that different from what the regular math classes taught (deductive logic, thinking ahead) and other useful things such as the value of discipline and patience.
As the assistant superintendent of the Detroit Public School Sytem once remarked, after welcoming the National Elementary Championship and watching the first round get underway, “Anything that can get that many kids to be that quiet has GOT to be valuable!”
Why not make your own rating tables, a la Harkness, and have the kids earn a club rating based on club tournament play? I have a modified Harkness table on my website. See the end of this file:
In a JTP event USCF membership is not required in order to rate the event.
There are two types of JTP events:
Primary events (grade 3 and below). A primary event can have students from more than one school in it and does not have to be run by a scholastic affiliate.
In-school events. This is restricted to students (through 12th grade) who all attend the same school, and the tournament has to be run by the scholastic affiliate for that school.
(Note that a match between schools cannot be run as a JTP event unless it is a primary JTP event, i.e., all players are in grade 3 or lower.)
Some of the material you can use can be bought from USCF or sold elsewhere. Check out professorchess.com and the downloads section has a variety of material that I’ve used.
As for targeting the parents of chess students, I for one understand that the best players have parents who, although they may not play chess (which I don’t see as being all that necessary), are actively involved in helping their kids take part in sholastic activities. I have one young man who is my top player, and his mother brings him to the tournaments, but she has no interest in chess beyond what her son wants to do with it. And I’m okay with that.
It’s like my son who’s in band. Sure, I go to the events he’s in and have joined band boosters, but that doesn’t mean I should have to learn trombone!