Spicewood Elementary Chess Club
Central Texas Chess club
Chess club will meet in the gym for the next two weeks. The library is setup for the annual Bookfair and not available to us.
We will setup chess boards on the floor as there are no tables/chairs in the gym.
Parents may want to consider wearing jeans. Please do not wear shoes with heels as they can scratch the gym floor.
In today’s meeting, James showed the following video to the Pawns group:
Chris reviewed the Ruy Lopez opening and showed the following video to the Knights group:
Ruy Lopez is the short name of Rodrigo Lopez de Segura who was a Spanish priest who lived between 1530 and 1580. Ruy Lopez wrote a book in 1561 called Libro de la invención liberal y arte del juego del Axedrez which was one of the first definitive books about modern chess in Europe.
The Ruy Lopez Opening (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5) is named after him, as is a variation in the Petroff Defence (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Nxe5 Qe7).
The painting above shows Ruy Lopez being defeated by Leonard di Cutri, an Italian chess master. After Leonard won against Ruy Lopez in Spain, he asked for his town Cutro to be exonerated of taxes and called Cutro “City of Chess”, where every year this event is remembered in a traditional day in August.
We also handed out some bonus chess homework that reviews how to take Chess notation during a chess game. We ask that each student play a game of chess this weekend and write down the game in Chess notation on the provided notation sheet. Students that turn in the notation sheet with a game written down will get a Chess buck at next week’s meeting. If you did not receive the handout at today’s meeting, you can download and print it at home using this link.
Registration for the 2018-2019 school year opened on August 15th. Please click on the About section above and then click on the Registration link. That page gives all the details on the registration process and a link to the Registration Form. You can also click here to go directly to that page.
Club registration will end on September 14th. After this date, we will no longer accept any new students until the second semester begins in January 2019.
For parents and students that are thinking about joining our club, you can attend our first three club meetings without committing to join. Come to our meetings and see how you like it. We ask that you make your final decision to join by our registration deadline of September 14th.
Let’s make this a recurring post. Send us photos of yourself wearing your Chess club tshirt from interesting places and we will post them here for everyone to see.
Great idea Sean and family!
We had a successful first club meeting last week for our returning students. Thank you to our parent volunteers for making the meeting go smoothly.
This week, we welcome all of our new students to our club meeting. James is preparing to teach the basics of Chess to our beginning students, so don’t worry if you have never played Chess before. This is also good for parents who want to learn how to play. You can watch James’s lesson as well.
Parents, please remember to complete all of the steps required to join the club. You can review the registration requirements by clicking the above pulldown menu under “About” and then choose “Registration” Just follow the six easy steps.
Please make sure to make your checks out to “RRISD Spicewood Elementary Chess Club” and put the name of your student somewhere on the Check so we can properly credit them.
Thank you to all the Door Monitor volunteers. It looks like we have slots filled up for the next 11 meetings!
All returning Chess club students are invited to our first Chess club meeting on the SECOND day of school, Friday August 17th starting at 6:35am in the Library.
All parents are asked to follow the steps to register your student(s) by going to our Registration page located here:
The registration fee is the same as last year. Please make sure you follow the directions for making your payment. This we, we ask that if you plan to turn in a check at this Friday’s meeting, please postdate it for August 24th. The reason for this is that Ms. Reeb will not be at the club meeting on the 17th but will be at the following meeting.
For all NEW students who want to join the Chess club, your first meeting will be August 24th. Same time and location as above.
Thank you and we are all looking forward to a fun year of Chess and Chess related activities.
Chris and James
Parents,
New this year, the school requires all parents to fill out and submit a permission form allowing your students to attend Chess Club. Please print and fill out this PDF file and turn in to either Ms. Reeb in the library, the office staff or any of the parent volunteers during this Friday’s club meeting.
2017-2018 Parental Permission Form
In order to be allowed to attend the Chess club meetings with your kids on Friday mornings, parent’s are required to fill out paperwork to become an official school volunteer.
One of the questions on the registration form contained links to the online and paper version of the volunteer application form. The easiest method is to use the RRISD online Volunteer Form. This link takes you to a page with a large button at the bottom of the screen with the text “Apply”. Clicking that button takes you to the RRISD employment system. It shows all the open jobs available, like bus drivers, cafeteria staff, custodians, crossing guards, etc. Scroll to the very bottom and you will see a job titled 2017-2018 RRISD Volunteer. Click the Apply button next to that position. It will take you to a page where you need to create a login and a pin code. Once logged in, you then fill out the necessary information and submit. After you submit the application, you will not receive any feedback or further messages from RRISD unless there was a problem with your application.
The above online submission form requires you to enter your social security number. If you do not have a social security number or do not want to send your SSN across the internet, they also provide a form that you can printout and submit. Paper Volunteer Form. (Available in English, Spanish, Mandarin and Korean). In order to be processed, the completed paper application along with a photo copy of identification must be faxed to: Rachael Brunson, Community Partnerships Supervisor at (512) 464-5055.
Good luck parents!
Registration for the 2017-2018 school year has opened. Please click on the About section above and then click on the Registration link. That page gives some details about the registration process and a link to the Registration Form.
You can also click here to go directly to that page.
Last weekend, 31 Spicewood chess club members attended the Casis Elementary School chess tournament. The tournament consisted of 5 rounds of games each worth 1 point. In total, our kids scored a total of 81 out of a possible 155 points. (52%) Overall, our team won team trophies in 4 sections: 2nd place in sections K-3 U500 and K-3 U800. 3rd place in sections K-5 U800 and K-5 Any.
Five Spicewood students received trophies for scoring in the top percentile of their groups: Gavin Wang (5th place in K-3 U300), Vincent Yang (4th place in K-3 U500), Ramzi Matous (1st place in K-5 U300), Marvel Chung (2nd place in K-5 U800) and Kavin Thiyagarajan (4th place in K-5 U800).
Ten Spicewood students received medals for scoring in the second percentile of their groups: Joyce Song, Draden Jones, Bryan Lee, Varun Sanghavi, Isaac Zhang, Yifan Qiu, Alexander Ho, Raghav Aggarwal, Ivan Leong and Aryan Punalekar.
Congratulations to all of the participants. Each will receive special commemorative $5 Chess bucks for participation shown in the photos below. On one side, it shows a photo of Lilia May Casis who the school was named after. She was the first female professor at the University of Texas at Austin to be honored with a full professor title in 1916 teaching romance languages. On the other side of the Chess buck is an image of Lilia’s sister, Josephine Ramona Casis who was a lifelong primary school teacher for 33 years at the original Palm School. The two sisters were born in Kingston, Jamaica around 1870 and moved to Texas in 1890.
If you have photos from the tournament, please send them to Chris Jones at chris@spicewoodchess.org
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