PHOTO BY LANA BRADSTREAM Rogers Elementary fourth-grade student Andrew Mung makes a chess move against Marshalltown Community School District Superintendent Dr. Theron Schutte on Monday. Chess champions from all of the district’s elementary schools played against district and community leaders in a special pizza party tournament.

Marshalltown Community School District chess players participated in a special tournament on Monday.

Chess champions from each elementary school building played against district and community leaders, while enjoying pizza.

Beth Koester, Extended Learning Program (XLP) instructor, said chess was introduced to the students for the first time during this school year, after Christmas.

“We started to play and they really liked it,” she said. “They didn’t want to stop, and they wanted to make a club. Then we got it going in all the schools, and it’s been a lot of fun.”

To determine who would play the adults, Koester said a chess tournament was held among the students. In order to be in the school tournament, she said students had to know the pieces, and how they moved. The tournament was then divided into brackets.

XLP instructor Nicole Holman Lankelma said the kids versus adults chess tournament was a celebration of what the students learned.

“They’ve been super excited about this, and counting down the days,” she said.

Holman Lankelma said there are numerous benefits children can obtain from learning chess, such as critical thinking, strategy building and developing a flexible mindset.

“Those are all great soft skills we want our kids to have,” she said. “So many of our kids never played chess before a few months ago, and just watching their confidence increase as they started to believe in themselves and get to this point, and their excitement in feeling like they are good at something has been wonderful.”

Some of the community and district leaders who participated in Monday’s tournament included MCSD Director of Instruction Shauna Smith, MCSD Superintendent Dr. Theron Schutte, Marshalltown Police Chief Mike Tupper, MCSD School Board President Sean Heitmann and KFJB host Kyle Martin.

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Contact Lana Bradstream

at 641-753-6611 ext. 210 or

lbradstream@timesrepublican.com.