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Thursday, June 20, 2019

Chess Tournament Winners

Yesterday we had a chess tournament for our last session with the Eastern Knights.  The tournament was 6 games of 10 mins each.  It was fun and we all got to play different people.

We had 3 clear winners:


1st - Timana
2nd - Isla
3rd - Angus












We are all super star chess players now!  Nuhaka Exchange next week.  Yay! 




Monday, June 17, 2019

Students beating their parents!

Wow our class is getting good at chess!  Using these strategies our parents don't know what we are going to do next!  Keep up the great work!  

Here's what we are up to: 

Timed games change the pace and put you under pressure.  It is also a good way to make sure you finish up in a set amount of time for those who are in a hurry.  


Today we went over:

Scholar's mate: (Four move check): 


White:
King's pawn E2 to E4
White
F1 to C4
White
D1 to H5
White
H5 to F7 - Checkmate

  
Can you find out how to defend against it? 

Italian opening - focus on the white pieces: 


White
E2 to E4 (Pawn)
Black
E7 to E5 (Pawn)
White
G1 to F3 (Knight)
Black
B8 to C6 (knight)
White
F1 to C4 (Bishop)
Black
Moves into the game
  • Control the centre 4 squares. 

Stalemate:  

When you can't move anywhere without going into check.  Game is a draw. 





Wednesday, June 12, 2019

Italian Opening

The Italian opening is good for beginners and gives you a good start controlling the centre of the board and allowing you to castle. 


Monday, June 10, 2019

Cooking in Chess...

Forks Pins and Skewers... 



Fork - attacking 2 or more pieces at the same time.

Pin - when a piece is stuck because if they move the king will be in check. 

Skewer - king in front another piece is behind it.  Person attacking gains something of great of greater value.

This is a Pin...

Are you like your star sign?

We went on a trip to the museum to the star lab and learnt about how our ancestors navigated the seas with the stars.  We saw all the different shapes of the constellations.  The reason we are learning about this is because this year is the Sestercentennial - 250 Years since the first landings of Europeans.  Tairawhiti was the actual first landing!



Here are some photos from the Museum.  A bit blurry but shows us in the star lab learning about our ancestors.

This was really interesting.  The constellations are right above us at certain times of the year.  One of the things wWe had a look at our star signs and did some writing about them.  We learnt was that they are named after Greek Gods and characters of the myths.  They also have personality types which we compared to ourselves to see if they were true!

Check out our blogs to see our writing and artwork!

Is there any other uses for knowing the star constellations?
What do you know about navigating and our first encounters?

Here is Miss McIntosh showing off our cool art!