How to run a school chess club
Written by the people who made the worksheets, so treat the plan as a suggestion and the PDFs as the useful part. Everything linked here is free to print and photocopy, including in a club the school charges for.
The printable worksheets are at reflexchess.com/worksheets
What you actually need
- Boards and sets for half your expected numbers. Two children per board is a club, three is a queue. Plastic tournament sets with roll-up vinyl boards are the standard for a reason: they are cheap, they stack, and they survive being dropped.
- A printer. That is the whole materials budget. The worksheets are black and grey on US Letter, three pages each.
- Forty minutes and a room. Lunchtime works. After school works better, because nobody has to leave in the middle.
- A box. One box with the sets, a stack of printed sheets and a marker in it, that lives in one place. Clubs die of setup friction more than of anything else.
What you do not need at the start: clocks, scoresheets, a rating system, a tournament, or any ability at chess beyond setting up the board. Buy clocks when somebody complains about a slow opponent, and not before.
A first six sessions
The same shape every week: ten minutes on a worksheet with the boards away, five minutes going through the answers together, then games until the end. The worksheet is what makes it a club rather than a room where children play chess, and the boards-away part is the bit that does the work, because a position you cannot touch has to be calculated.
Week 1: Mate in One
Start on a win. Every answer is a check, so nobody leaves the first session having found nothing.
Week 2: Hanging Pieces
The habit that decides their games. Ask the question out loud every time for a fortnight and it sticks.
Week 3: Back Rank Mates
The first pattern with a name. Expect somebody to play it in a club game that afternoon.
Week 4: Chess Forks
The most enjoyable sheet in the set, which is why it is here rather than first. Spend it on the week you need one.
Week 5: Chess Pins
Slower, and the first sheet where the strongest table should get the Intermediate band instead.
Week 6: Chess Skewers
Pairs with week five. Run them back to back and the difference between the two finally lands.
Each of those has an Intermediate and an Advanced band as well, which is how you keep the strong table busy without splitting the session in two. The full set is 36 sheets across 12 patterns, or roughly a school year at one a week.
The mixed-ability problem, which is the real problem
Every school club has a child who has been playing since they were four and a child who learned the rules on Tuesday, and the usual failure is running the session at one of them. Three things that work:
- Same pattern, three bands. Give the Easy sheet to one table, the Intermediate to the next and the Advanced to the strongest. Everyone spends ten minutes on forks, at the level that makes them think, and the discussion afterwards is one conversation.
- Give the strongest child a job. Marking a table's sheets from the answer key, or setting up the boards, or playing one game against three opponents at once. Being useful holds a strong player far better than being told to go easy.
- Handicap the pieces, not the effort. A stronger player without their queen playing seriously is a better game for both of them than a stronger player pretending. Children are very good at spotting a thrown game, and they resent being on the receiving end of one.
Keeping it alive once the novelty goes
Sooner or later attendance dips, and the club that survives it is usually the one that already had something running in the background. Four that cost nothing:
- A ladder on the wall. Names on cards, beat the person above you, swap the cards. Costs nothing and takes over a club completely.
- A finish to work towards. A one-afternoon internal tournament at the end of a half term, four rounds, everyone plays every round. Do not run knockout brackets: half the club is eliminated in round one and stops coming.
- A match against another school. Even one. The children who play in it will still be talking about it in July.
- Something to take home. A worksheet is a thing a child hands to a parent, and a parent who sees one is a parent who knows the club exists.
Running it without devices
Plenty of schools cannot put children on screens at club time, and every resource in this section is designed for that: the worksheets are PDFs, they need no account, no login and no internet once printed, and the answer key means a supervising adult who does not play chess can still run the session. That is the whole reason they exist as files rather than as a web page.
Free resources to link or print
- 36 printable worksheets -- 12 patterns, three bands each, 432 positions, answer key on every sheet.
- Printing and marking guide -- including how to read the answer key if you do not play chess.
- What order to teach things in.
- Written guides to 12+ tactical patterns, with worked positions, if you want to explain one at the board.
- The Reflex Chess trainer -- free, no adverts, no chat, and the first 3 skills need no account, for the children who want to keep going at home.
All of it is free to use and free to link to. If your club or school keeps a resources page, a link to reflexchess.com/worksheets is genuinely useful to the next organiser looking for printable material, and it is the only thing we would ever ask for.
Questions
What do I need to start a school chess club?
Boards and sets for half your expected numbers, a printer, and a room for forty minutes a week. Clocks and scoresheets can wait. The single most useful purchase is a second set of boards, because two children per board is a club and three is a queue.
Do I need to be good at chess to run a club?
No. You need to be able to set the boards up, settle arguments about the rules, and mark a worksheet from an answer key, which requires no chess ability at all. The children who are stronger than you will be delighted to be asked.
How do you handle very different abilities in one room?
Give the same pattern at three difficulty bands to three tables. Everybody is working on one idea at the level that makes them think, and the discussion at the end is about one thing rather than three.
Are the worksheets free for a school to copy?
Yes, including a club a school charges for. Print them, photocopy them, keep them in a folder for a term. No attribution is required, though a link from a club resources page helps other organisers find them.