School and Community Winter 2023

Check Mate! Introducing chess in the classroom BY: PHOEBE POHLMAN, PERRY COUNTY SCHOOL DISTRICT 32 I am a gifted and talented education teacher for students in second through fifth grades at Perryville Primary Center and Perryville Elementary School. My classroom is a pull-out resource classroom, so I teach gifted students in small groups. I created an interdisciplinary unit around the game of Chess addressing multiple content areas including history, art, logic and complex reasoning. Some people may wonder, how can a game be turned into a learning opportunity in the classroom? Chess is a game of logic, cause and effect, inferencing and risk taking. Students will exercise their complex thinking skills without even realizing it - and I guarantee they will have a lot of fun while learning the ancient game! The first thing students learned in the unit was the history of Chess. Students colored a world map to chart the path of the game as it traveled across the world from its origin in India. We also discussed how the pieces of Chess were redesigned and adapted to fit the royal lifestyle of Europeans as the game spread across Europe during Medieval times before moving to America. After learning the history of Chess, I taught students how to play the game. Many gifted and talented students have psychomotor intensities and learn best when they are moving or actively involved in the learning process. To help students learn most effectively, I laminated 12x12 squares of construction paper and blocked out a 64-square-foot section of the tiled floor in my classroom. I taped the squares down to make a life-size Chess board. Students “became” the Chess pieces (King, Queen, Bishop, Knight, Rook or Pawn) and moved around the board according to their assigned role. Physically adopting the role of different chess pieces helped students to quickly learn and retain the basics of the game. The Chess unit culminated in an all-gifted program Chess tournament. I made a tournament bracket to post on the classroom wall, which was the first place many students went each day to check the tournament progress! We had a tournament winner in each grade

32 | WINTER 2023 S&C