Everyone should watch these two videos on Chess openings.
September 15th Club Meeting
Today is the last day to register for Chess club. Make sure you turn in a signed permission form and your registration fee if you haven’t already.
Today we will show the Pawns group a video on Chesskid about opening moves:
https://www.chesskid.com/video/player/first-moves—part-1
Make sure you login to Chesskid before watching it or it will only let you see the first few seconds of the video.
The Knights, Rooks and Kings will also watch a video about opening moves:
Parent Permission Forms
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
Parent Volunteers – Please Read
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!
Club registration opens
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.
Casis Elementary Tournament Results
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
T-Shirt Day!
At today’s Club meeting, we handed out the new Chess club T-shirts to all attending students. Don’t worry if you missed the meeting today, we will get your shirt to you. If you are a parent that ordered one and were not at today’s meeting, please come next week and make sure you pay for the extra shirt. ($7) James recognized Abigail Yarbrough in front of the whole club, thanking her for her winning design. Everyone loves it. (See her photo in the slideshow below). It was probably one of a few opportunities we would have to take a group photo with everyone wearing the shirt, so enjoy the photos below. It really is like herding cats trying to get everyone to stay still long enough and actually smile at the same time! Thanks to all the parents that attended today for your help and a special thanks goes out to Christina Mason for leading the procurement and pickup of the Tshirts.
Club registration is open
At the beginning of each spring semester, we reopen club registration for a week to allow new students to enroll in the club.
Registration is now open until next Friday, January 13th.
Please see the instructions on our Registration page on the website:
Chess Club T-shirts!!!
We will be ordering t-shirts at the end of next week. The shirt will look like the mockup image to the left. This year’s t-shirt graphic was designed Abigail Yarbrough who won our design contest earlier in the year. The t-shirt material will also be a higher quality than last year’s, softer, etc.
All Chess club members will receive a t-shirt as part of their registration fee. If parents would also like one of these shirts, you will need to fill out the following form with your information and pay $6 for each extra shirt you buy.
Kealing Tournament Results
Last weekend, 39 Spicewood chess club members attended the Kealing Middle School chess tournament. The tournament consisted of 5 rounds of games each worth 1 point. In total, our kids scored a total of 91.5 out of a possible 189 points. (48%)
Overall, our team won a team trophy in all 6 sections we participated in! 1st place in sections K-3 U300 and K-5 U500. 2nd place in sections K-3 U500, K-5 U800 and K-5 Any. 3rd place in section K-3 U800. Really a great job by everyone.
Six Spicewood students received trophies for scoring in the top percentile of their groups: Murtaza Sanjeliwala (4th place in K-3 U300), Yifan Qiu (1st place in K-5 U500), Alexander Ho (2nd place in K-5 U500), Noah Greep (3rd place in K-5 U500), Kavin Thiyagarajan (4th place in K-5 U500) and Annika Shivam (6th place in K-5 U800).
Nine Spicewood students received medals for scoring in the second percentile of their groups: Isaac Zhang, Alice Zhang, Sean Toeh, Rounav Sur, Benjamin Sloma, Niko McMullen, Ivan Leong, David Li 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 Hightower Theodore Kealing who was an African-American educator, writer, editor and activist in Austin in the 19th century. Kealing Middle school is named after him. One the other side of the Chess buck is an image of Kealing Middle school’s mascot, the hornets.
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