Yes2Chess: New School Year, New Training

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Teesside Barclaycard Training Day

20.10.2014

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The first Teesside Barclaycard training day of the new school year had two aims: preparing the new intake of volunteers for their first expeditions to our local schools and extending the chess knowledge of two groups featuring last year's volunteers.

The Yes2Chess project - which made an excellent start last year and it shows every sign of building on its considerable success in 2014-5 - has two prongs: volunteers, working alongside CSC tutors, and the Yes2Chess online tournament.

I have taken over the Teesside training role from John Foley this year. John is a very hard act to follow, which is partly why my training day was very different to his in many ways!

The two morning groups brought together the new volunteers. We ran through the history of the Chess in Schools and Communities project, explained about Yes2Chess and introduced various chess pieces via the traditional mini-games. 

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We also spent some time explaining how things work (and why they sometimes don't) in schools, starting with the arrival and search for the external school bell.

The afternoon sessions offered extra tuition to last year's volunteers, including some simple checkmates (both as group exercises and on individual worksheets) and tips on how to finish off games when one has a large advantage.

Matt Allan - Champion of Chess for Teesside Barclaycard - hosted the event and took part in one of the afternoon sessions. Here he is mastering the King, Queen and Rook vs. King checkmate, with the pressure from the onlookers keeping him full focused on the task in hand.

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All of the volunteers were very keen students and I'm looking forward to working with them again very soon.

Here are a few more images from a busy day of chess.

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Kate finds the checkmate!

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Kevin finds another checkmate!

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Hard at work on chess puzzles.

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For further information on Chess in Schools and Communities, please head for the official website.