Teacher Tip – Using Great Moves with More Advanced Chess Students

In piloting Great Moves, one of our tests was in a summer camp program run by the National Scholastic Chess Foundation. In each of the four weeks of camp, we featured a different section from the book as “bonus” material that then drove our discussions to the evolution of these concepts to more modern play.

Each camp had several children who were at a more beginner level. These students were introduced to the concepts from Part 1, but with many more practice examples and lots of review of developing pieces and of basic checkmating patterns.

For tournament players coming to camp, they want to focus just on play. The stories are covered rather more quickly than we might like when we want to do more than just develop chess skill. But again, these children have committed to a week-long chess camp (sometimes coming for multiple weeks) because they want to get better at chess in a real hurry. Each week we focused on a different time period and key player from history. So in week 1, for example, we worked through Part 2 exploring the many advances made by Philidor, and then discovering how his ideas relate to playing today. More modern games that tie in to his ideas can be found in this great article by Grandmaster Bryan Smith at chess.com, which begins with the Captain Smith vs. Philidor game (London, 1790) we feature in the book (p.107). Your own searches of the players and concepts should lead to similar resources.