Bahamas hosts Chess workshop for teachers

BCF hosts Chess workshop for teachers at Martin Town Primary School
Thursday, July 21, 2011
The Freeport News
Bahamas

President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, of the Chess in Schools Commission, which is an iniatiative of the World Chess Federation aims for ‘One Billion’ – one billion people around the world playing chess. The Commission’s latest online article was a report from The Bahamas.

The President of the Bahamas Chess Federation and National Instructor, Kean Smith, describes the latest work to contribute to the development of chess in the schools of these beautiful small islands.

The Bahamas Chess Federation (BCF) hosted its first chess workshop for Primary School Teachers on May 27 and 28, 2011.

There were ten (10) participants from two Primary Schools namely Holmes Rock and Martin Town Primary.

During the one day workshop conducted by NI Byron Small, the teachers were introduced to chess with a view to using it as a teaching tool to develop their students’ learning skills and intelligence.

The main areas of intelligence are spatial judgment, linguistic, interpersonal and logic. During the workshop, NI Kean Smith took time out to work with interested students.

The interest and enthusiasm shown by the teachers during the chess workshop was impressive and encouraging.

At the end of the workshop, Holmes Rock and Martin Town Primary were presented with ten and two chess sets respectively.

The two chess sets presented to Martin Town was in addition to ten chess sets donated to Martin Town in February of this year at the BCF Freeport Rating Tournament.

The BCF has pledged a total of twenty chess sets and two demonstration boards to each school and Steps 1 and 2 of the Learning Chess Manual for chess trainers written by Rob Brunia and Cor van Wijgerden.

This initiative is just the beginning of a developmental effort by the BCF, to promote chess throughout The Bahamas and the interest displayed, particularly by these Grand Bahama schools, is very encouraging.

Source: http://freeport.nassauguardian.net