Reflections - Chess Club

Before the Activity:

I had never quite liked to play chess. I had always seen this game as very complicated and diffcult to play at a high level. However, a couple of days ago I started watching videos of chess on the internet and was completely fascinated. My brother, who is in my class was also very interested and decided to initiate a Chess Club with another friend of my school who is actually a VERY good chess player. The purpose of the Chess club will be to spread this game throughout our school and attract new members in order to show that this game is in fact pretty exciting!

During the Activity:

There's been a wave of members entering the chess club. A lot of people from my class have joined and are very excited about it. We usually had to play in recess against each other or in the mobile phone. However, now that we have a Chess Club we can play more freely and train each other. Cesar, who is the most experimented and skilled player of the Chess Club (and is the co-founder) watches us while we playa against one another and teaches us good techniques and how to make the most out of the other player's bad moves. I am particularly amazed by the depth at which chess can be played. By this I mean chess involves an infite amount of pre-established plays which the player uses to fight the opponent, linking one play to the next and choosing which one is the best one. By learning these basic plays, you can have a great advantage over you opponent because you can then see mistakes whereas before you did not!

After the Activity:

The only issue is that all of the members of the club are from 11th and 12th grade. We wanted younger students to enter the club and maybe we should try to advertize the chess club to promote it to a greater level.

These are the learning outcomes I aim to achieve during this activity:

1. Undertaken new challenges (I have never taught chess to other people! I hav always been the student...)

2. Increased awareness of strengths and areas for growth. (After the Chess Club finishes I want to be aware about which are my strong and weak points as a chess player in order to train myself properly.)

8. Developed new skills. (I want to be able to analyze plays properly and most importantly, learn a wide range of plays which I could adapt at different times such as different openings or defenses.)