Can Our School Get In on the Action?

In addition to being willing to bring a Magna Charter event to your school, the EVCS Chess Club looks forward to helping any school or community group establish a scholastic chess club. Again, just ask.

The fundamentals of a scholastic chess club are a place to meet and an adult to convene the meeting. Putting the word out to school families that such a project is being undertaken is sure to enthuse and attract some parents who can play or supervise, and the rest proceeds at the pace of the school's willingness to support the endeavor. Some schools limit their ambition to teaching kids how to play chess. Others also provide opportunities for playing in-school just for fun, and some, like ours, also introduce kids to competitive chess governed by the U.S. Chess Federation (USCF). We do all three, but you don't have to.

We can recommend the downloadable texts "The Chess Teaching Manual," produced by the Chess Federation of Canada (which despite its general title, is a manual for particularly scholastic applications), "A Beginner's Guide to Coaching Scholastic Chess," by Ralph Bowman, as well as the USCF's own "Guide to Scholastic Chess (11th ed.)."

For information about where you can obtain the various equipment and tools a chess club may need, see our Resources page.

Chapters 1, 2 and 11 of the "Official Rules of Chess (7th ed.)" are available as FREE downloads in PDF here.

Under no circumstances should you feel that you must invent the wheel on your own: Help IS out there!