Why Kids Should Learn to Play Chess in School

Spring has brought us a lot of rainy days lately, which keeps us inside a lot. Instead of giving in to the constant requests for t.v. and video games, we have been trying to pull out the chess board more and more. Both of my older sons learned to play Chess in first frade, but my youngest who is only just four is interested enough that he knows the names of the pieces and how they move. To me, Chess is more than a great rainy day activity. It is also a beneficial part of any home school or classroom setting.

 Students who play chess can expand their knowledge in many ways, such as:

- Critical Thinking Skills: Chess is essentially a thinking game. You have to remember the many ways that different pieces to create a strategy that will not be outdone by your opponent. All of this builds critical thinking skills, which are vitally important in all types of math problems.

- Strategy building a.k.a “There are Multiple Ways to Solve a Problem”: Developing a strategy to win a game is the same mental skill as developing a strategy to solve a math problem. When playing Chess, you often have to change strategies mid-game in response to the moves of your opponent.

- Vocabulary: From the names of the pieces to the word “check”, there is are history and language lessons to be taught through the vocabulary of Chess. Additionally, these words have made it  into our every day language. For example, “Treating someone as a pawn.”

- Reading about Chess: There are tons and tons of books about Chess, books where you can learn how to play or increase the number of strategies you have. My boys have Chess for Kids and love reading about new strategies that might help them beat their father in Chess. This could also be a great opportunity for a lesson into the beginning of internet research as there are many online sources to learn about chess as well.

 

- Learn about the History of the Game: Chess is a very old game, dating back to Ancient India. Learning about the history of a game they enjoy can help expose them to the concepts of the spread of ideas between civilizations, the changing and tweaking of ideas over time due to new political and religious environments and even government censorship as Chess was banned in France in 1254 through an anti-gambling law. Students could even do Biography Projects on famous Chess masters.

- Character Education: Chess is a hard game and someone always loses. Kids need to learn to be good winners and good losers in life. My middle son has a hard time when he loses a game. However in Chess he is always learning new moves and so his goal now is not to beat his brother, but to learn something new each time he plays.

- Use Simulation Games: There are lots of ways to play Chess against the computer. This means that students don’t even need a partner and it gives them a chance to learn new moves. When we play Chess, we talk about observation. Observing what our opponent is doing can be more important to winning than knowing our own next move. Also, it is a way to learn new strategies that you can use in future games.

- Building Global Citizenship: Chess has essentially the same rules worldwide nowadays (this was not always true!) and with the advancement of the internet, children can play with other kids around the world. I have seen students who do not speak the same language sit down to a game of chess and play happily together for hours. My boys use the website Chess Kid to play chess with kids all around the world.

In a classroom, integrating Chess can be as simple as having boards available for indoor recess, math centers, or other downtime. Or it can be an integral part of your day using these strategies:

- Teach all of the kids the rules at the beginning of the year. Split the class into two teams. Set up a game board in the front of the room. When a student is caught being good, they get to choose a move for their team. The winning team gets a special prize.

- Play against another class. Send e-mails or letters between the two classes playing a long distance game. This would be a great addition to a penpal or e-pal program.

- Have chess boards available each morning as morning work or at the beginning of math class as an activator. Teach kids how to track their moves so that boards can be put away quickly and games can continue from one class to the next.

Have you ever thought about playing Chess in your classroom?

One size DOES NOT fit all!

Wow, it’s been two weeks since I’ve published a post here. So sorry for the silence guys! We have been in the process of switching locations from one WWOOF farm to another and we planned a learning itinerary along the way, all of which took up more time then I had anticipated. (For more info on what I’ve been up to, check out my other blog – RVing with the Raki’s.)

However, while we were driving I did have a little time for reading. I decided to read To Kill a Mockingbird, which I had never read and which is on my son’s list of books to complete a Self-Selected Novel Study on next school year. In the beginning of the book, the main character enters first grade already able to read and write, but is told by her teacher that she needs to forget everything she already knows because she was taught “wrong”. This teacher has a new methodology that will work for everybody and she is going to re-teach her “correctly”. The educator in my bristled so much while reading this. (Isn’t it funny how we never turn off that teacher lens?) There is no right or wrong way to learn how to do something! However, this runs very parallel to so many new programs around, including the Common Core. Devoting ourselves to only one program or way of learning tells students and parents that our way is the only way to learn something and they should just forget the ways they already knew.

In reality, anyone who has been in the classroom or who has worked with kids in any capacity knows and understands that each kid is unique. The strategy that helps one student understand might not be the right strategy for his neighbor. I have seen this over and over in my classroom and it is part of the reason that I have almost 600 resources in my store. Each time I saw something different that my kids needed, I created it and then I was able to give groups of students a choice between different but related resources and strategies.

For example, when I was teaching word families to first graders, our most important skill was to be able to read word family words. So I gave my students three word family centers to choose from.

Self-Correcting Puzzles

Board Games

Making Words Centers

Some of my first graders also came to me reading.  They started the year with more challenging word families, things with complex blends and long vowels. They were never told to forget what they already knew, we simply expanded on their base.

 

Reading comprehension is a major goal for older students. When I taught third grade, we worked on reading comprehension in lots of different ways, with assigned reading, self selected reading, group reading projects. My students had lots of different types of opportunities to reflect on their reading through:

Reading Journals 

Reading Logs

Reading Comprehension Bookmarks

Teacher Directed Novel Studies

Student Directed Novel Studies

There is also no reason to re-teach students something that they already know. I’ve seen this happen a lot in Math. I’ve heard “Yes, your mom showed you how to borrow, but I don’t want you to do that yet. Next month, I’m going to re-teach you the correct way to do that.” This type of a statement breeds resentment and conflict between parents and teachers. Instead, how much easier would life be if we said “That’s so great that you already have a strategy for solving this problem! You are welcome to use that strategy if it makes sense to you. Today we’re going to learn a different way to solve that same type of problem. See if you can conquer both strategies, so that you will have extra tools in your Math tool belt, but if you don’t you can continue solving problems using your strategy.” There are so many different ways in every subject to do the exact same thing. Our children only benefit from knowing multiple strategies. However, they also need to be aware that it is a GOOD thing and that comes back to teacher attitude and perceptions. If we tell them it’s awesome to have multiple ways, they’ll believe that. If we tell them that their way is wrong and our way is right, they’ll believe that too and fight what already makes sense to them. When I taught in Morocco, many of my students came to me already knowing how to do long division, but their long division didn’t look the same as my way of doing long division. Instead of fighting the process, they taught me how they did long division and I made these posters so that all of my students could learn all the different ways to do extended operations.

Extended Operations Posters

 

This Year’s Homeschool Curriculum

For the past two years, I taught at a school with multiage classrooms and small class sizes.  This prepared me fully for the “teaching position” I am taking on this year – homeschooling my own children, ages 3, 7 and 10.  For the last few years, my sons have been attending school in French and Arabic in Morocco, so we are homeschooling to help them maintain their languages, even though we have returned to the US to full time RV. 

When I tell people that we are going to homeschool, the first question is generally – what curriculum are you using?  Due to our unique circumstances, I have created a curriculum specifically for my children, with a mixture of my own resources and resources that I purchased when we were in Morocco.

Each week, we will follow a distinct routine, with the kids doing independent learning using a to-do list and me filling in where I see they need help.  Here’s a look at what my 5th grader’s to-do list will look like:

Listening:  He will complete 6 “listening” activities a week for the first 3 weeks of the month, and then on the 4th week, he will choose his favorite from each language and revise, edit and publish that listening summary to his blog – Traveling From a Kid’s Point of View.  The listening activities are educational videos on a topic of his choice – 2 in each language.  After watching the video, he summarizes what he learned and makes connections in a two to three paragraph write up.  This activity helps him to “immerse” himself into the languages regularly.  It also gives him a chance to work on note taking, summarizing and all of our writing skills, including staying on topic, giving enough details and using good grammar.

 Reading:  In addition to 40 minutes of reading in each language (logged on his Weekly Reading Logs), he will complete novel studies in English and Arabic using my Generic Novel Study packet.  In French, he will complete pages in his French “basal type” reading book.  I want him to combine pleasure reading with a more structured approach to reading.  Also, each week he will record himself reading for a one minute “fluency check” – each week in a different language.

Typing:  By this age, his handwriting is pretty much what it’s going to be, so instead of handwriting, he will be practicing his typing – on both an English and Arabic keyboard – using websites that you can find in my Teaching Typing blog post.  My second grader will do handwriting in French and Arabic, but work on typing in English this year. 

Grammar:  While we will be doing a lot of applied grammar in our listening summaries and writing, there are still some grammar rules that need to be introduced in case they don’t come up naturally.  We will be using Daily Language to do this in English and specific grammar books to work on this in French and Arabic.

Writing:  We will be doing writing in two week blocks, with two weeks dedicated to brainstorming, drafting, revising and editing a writing pieces in a specific genre from my Writing Journals.  Each two weeks we will change languages, but stick with one genre for a trimester.  We are starting out with fiction writing and my oldest is excited to write a fantasy story with dragons and elfs!

Math:  In math, we will be introducing new concepts in English with Interactive Notebook pages, and then complete assigned work pages on these topics in all three of their languages.

Memorization:  In Morocco, the boys spent A LOT of time memorizing – poems, articles, Koran passages etc. etc. etc.  While I am not in favor of the amount of memorizing they were doing, I do still think the skill is important, so each week they will choose their own poem or passage to memorize, rotating through the three languages.

Science & Social Studies:  Instead of working on separate science and social studies topics, we have decided to devote ourselves to a year long country study which will cover all of our topics.  My 2nd grader has chosen Russia to study and my 5th grader has chosen China.  Each month, we will have a different focus as we study our countries:

September – Maps & Landforms (Geography)

October – Plants & Animals (Life Science & Ecology)

November – Folk Stories, Religion, Art & Music (Culture)

January – Archeological History (Earth Science/Fossils)

February – Ancient History (History)

March – Modern History (History & Government)

May – Structures & Inventors (Physical Science)

June – Government & Political Relations (Government)

July – Holidays & Food (Culture & Physical Science)

In addition to our “book learning”, we will be going on lots of field trips – near and far – and exploring the natural world around us.  Recently, we have been watching the growth of a group of ducklings that lives near our current campsite.

For a look at our homeschool schedule or find out more about our RV adventures, check out our sister blog – RVing with the Raki’s.