School and Community Winter 2023

level. Each of the winners advanced to the semifinals to play the winner in the grade level above or below them. The two winners of the semifinal advanced to the final to compete for the title of Chess Grandmaster. The tournament doubled as a performance-based assessment and an opportunity to teach effective skills as students learned lessons about honesty, defeat, risk taking and wishing opponents well. As an extension, my fourth and fifth-grade classes were challenged to adapt the game of Chess to modern times, much like Europeans did during the Medieval Ages. Students chose a modern topic and drew connections between the original Chess pieces and characters, sports positions or objects from their modern topic. Some examples of modern topics students chose to use were Mario Kart, Encanto, soccer, football, Roblox, animals and desserts. Students formed many different types of connections as their rationale, including hierarchies of power, how the chess pieces move on the board compared to sports positions on a playing field and characteristics of movie/video game characters as they related to the characteristics of Chess pieces. Students then chose how they wanted to design their adapted versions of the pieces. Some students’ choices included modeling clay, recyclable materials, craft supplies from our makerspace or a digital creation. Many also created their own boards so they could use their modern Chess sets at home. Although the unit was designed for the gifted and talented classroom, any teacher could adapt the unit to fit their classroom needs for any grade level. This Chess unit was designed based on the Missouri Gifted Learner Outcomes. The MO-GLOs focus on strengthening and challenging gifted students’ thought processes while developing six essential areas of leadership, including complex reasoning, creative thinking, communicating effectively, global mindedness, affective processing and executive functioning skills. This Chess unit most directly addressed the areas of complex reasoning, creative thinking and executive functioning skills. Many of my students came back to school excitedly talking about how they are now teaching their families to play Chess at home, or were able to bond with their grandparents over the game. Several told their classmates about the gifted Chess tournament. Soon after that, students from their homerooms started stopping me in the hallway to ask who had advanced to the next round! The most surprising part of the unit was that it seemed to spark an intergenerational interest in Chess. Students and families began practicing their complex reasoning skills while bonding over a centuries-old logic game.

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