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Press Lecture to Explore Chess for Academic Success
Press Lecture to Explore Chess for Academic Success | Lecture to Explore Chess for Academic Success |
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| By Dr,Alexey Root | |
| November 11, 2010 | |
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University of Texas at Dallas faculty member and former chess champion Dr.
Alexey Root will discuss how chess can help students succeed academically at a Coppell
Gifted Association (CGA) public lecture and demonstration on Sunday, November 14, 2010, 2-4 p.m. at New Tech
High School, 113 Samuel Blvd Coppell, TX 75019. See http://coppellgifted.org/2010/10/02/explore-chess-for-academic-success/
for more details. Cost is $5 non-members/FREE for CGA Members. Open to all ages; parents of children grades 3 or younger must stay with their children. Please bring a chess set and board with you or buy one at the presentation. As part of the presentation, participants will try mini-games of chess from Root's books. Mini-games help young children (ages 5-8) learn to take turns and to strategize, and are enjoyable for older children, teens, and adults too. No prior knowledge of chess is required. Mini-games include a chessmen version of "Connect Four", which illustrates horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines. A "Decoding" mini-game combines learning how the rook moves and captures with spelling practice. Participants will also try the "knight's tour problem," analyzed by the eighteenth century mathematician Leonhard Euler. Repeating a popular feature from last year's presentation by Dr. Root, participants may act out their proposed knight's tour solution on a giant (25" squares) chess board. Participants will also play chess with each other on regular-sized tournament chess sets and boards. Root has been a tournament chess player since age nine and won the U.S. Women's Chess Championship in 1989. She is a senior lecturer at The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) and was the associate director of the UTD Chess Program from 1999 to 2003. Root's work explores how chess can help educators reach academic goals with chess. Her books are Children and Chess: A Guide for Educators (2006); Science, Math, Checkmate: 32 Chess Activities for Inquiry and Problem Solving (2008); Read, Write, Checkmate: Enrich Literacy with Chess Activities (2009); and People, Places, Checkmates: Teaching Social Studies with Chess (2010). Dr. Root's books, and tournament-sized chess sets and boards, will be for sale at the November 14th program. Dr. Root's presentation is sponsored by the Coppell Gifted Association. The Coppell Gifted Association is an organization of parents and professionals who are concerned with supporting and creating expanded opportunities for the education of gifted and talented students of all ages and their families. CGA supports and encourages the development of such programs, both within the public schools and as extra-curricular activities utilizing community and individual resources. More information is at http://coppellgifted.org/. |
