I taught the “Coco Can’t Wait” activity from my book Science, Math, Checkmate: 32 Chess Activities for Inquiry and Problem Solving (Libraries Unlimited, www.lu.com, 2008, pp. 69-71)

The plan was taught to the Beginning and Intermediate groups. The beginners were called on individually to provide moves (verbally, in notation) for Coco and Grandma, which I made on the demonstration board and wrote in notation on the chalkboard. Some students copied that notation into their scorebooks.

The Intermediate group notated their answer to the Coco and Grandma knight maneuvers as they played with partners. As they notated, the parent volunteer (Mr. Cushing) and I checked their notation. Students sometimes did not use the capital N for knight and sometimes listed rank before file. So it was good to catch these errors and let students correct them.

The advanced group was told to work on the solution to the “Stalemate Surprise” activity during this past week. I tested four students on that drill. New material: knight vs. pawn, from pages 312-314 of the book Amateur to IM by Jonathan Hawkins. I was an editor/proofreader for the second printing of Amateur to IM. Brief discussion of careers in chess, writing, teaching.