SATURDAY ENRICHMENT FALL 2019 INTRODUCTION TO : EXERCISING YOUR BRAIN

Instructor: Cary R. Easterday Instructor Email: [email protected] Location: Loew Hall 118

Course Description A healthy lifestyle includes physical and mental fitness. Playing chess improves memory, concentration, foresight, math skills, reading skills, creativity, and problem-solving skills. Each week the instructor will provide puzzles, lessons, videos, and one-on-one play, monitor student progress, and help with questions. Lessons include setup, piece movements, strategy, tactics, openings, middlegame, endgame, , popular variants, and history. No experience is necessary.

Learning Outcomes By the end of this course, students should be able to: • Play standard chess, including such moves as castle, , and . • Demonstrate chess tactics such as forks, pins, skewers, batteries, discovered attacks, undermining, , , and sacrifices. • Record games using algebraic and descriptive chess notations. • Play popular chess variants such as Bughouse, Chess960, Transcendental, of the Hill, Upside-down, Atomic, Pawns Game, Peasants’ Revolt, and four-player Quad Kingdom. • Play in a , if they choose (optional participation).

Instructional Strategies • The instructor uses inquiry-based instruction to inspire student creativity and problem- solving abilities. • Students play chess games via cooperative learning and differentiation. • Each student receives a gold membership to Chesskid.com and has access to technology (computers, notebooks, phones) to solve chess puzzles, take self-paced chess lessons, and play online chess games with computer bots or other students.

Student Assessment There is no formal assessment for this course. The instructor will observe one-on-one play each week and will informally assess a student’s progress as they answer questions, solve puzzles, and progress in lessons/ranking on Chesskid.com.

Resources and Materials All students have gold member access to Chesskid.com. Older students (grades 4-8) will be pro- vided with a notebook and chess scorebook (for recording games). Introduction to Chess Syllabus, p. 2

Tentative Course Schedule Date Topic(s) and In-class Activities Week 1 How to set up the chess board, piece names and moves, board coordinate sys- Oct 5 tem. Week 2 How to record, read, and study games – algebraic short notation. Special moves Oct 12 in chess. Week 3 How to win (!). Endgame puzzles. Oct 19 Week 4 Chess tactics: forks, pins, skewers. Oct 26 Week 5 Chess tactics: batteries and sacrifices. Nov 2 Week 6 Chess tactics: discovered attacks, overloading. Nov 9 Week 7 Chess tactics: undermining, deflection. Nov 16 Week 8 Chess openings/defenses: classical v hypermodern, open v. closed, double-king- Nov 23 pawn.

Guggenheim Annex Box 351630 Seattle, Washington 98195-1630 206-543-4160 [email protected] http://RobinsonCenter.uw.edu