Chess club advice?

I've been running a chess club at my high school for most of the last year.  I have a small group who regularly turn up to play games at lunch time.  I'm wondering how to step things up a bit in terms of doing some chess teaching or just adding more variety to keep their interest.  It's hard because we pretty much only have 20 minutes of solid chess time available once people turn up etc.  

Any advice or resources welcome

20 minutes is a really small amount of time! Maybe it's time to try and set up for the occasional longer after school session?

Try some puzzles.......but I think you really need after school time!

I agree, if at all possible after school is best.

I had the same problem. 20 minutes isn't enough. I don't know what state you are in, but I entered my school in the NSW Junior chess League and once the kids had something to play for, they took it more seriously and were happy to come to after school chess.

It's like sports - people will only turn up to so many practices without a game coming up before they get sick of it.

I had a similar arrangement last year: in addition to the once per week afterschool chess club (where roughly 20 kids were attending on average), I had a small group of 4 (sometimes three, sometimes five) kids who came twice per week to my classroom to do some chess.

I tried a few different things, trying to keep it interesting:

- Playing simultaneously against them.

- Having them play against each other.

- Splitting them into two groups and have them play as a team. You need three boards for this: (1) the main/central board is where the game is played (one designated player per team moves on this board). (2) and (3) are "thinking/discussing boards" where each team plans what they will play in response to their opponents' moves.

- Reviewing a game of mine in which I highlighted something that I felt was relevant for them.

- Doing a puzzle rush as a group, talking about the different tactics and how to tackle puzzles and how they connect to real games.

- Finding short instructive videos that met the timelines and playing strengths of your players.

Not surprisingly, the small group that was able to come during lunch (other kids' schedule did not match my own) were the ones that made the most progress in the larger, after school club.

Thanks everyone for the ideas and encouragement! Sorry for the very late reply... I didn't seem to get a notification of the comments despite ticking the "follow" box.

And @jjupiter6 to answer your sort of question... I'm in Brisbane. I wonder if there is something here similar to the junior chess league you mentioned?

Looks like this is what we have in Queensland...

https://gardinerchess.com.au/events/inter-school-competition/