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PHOENIX CHESS ACADEMY NIGERIA LTD.,

ABuja

Chess In Schools Programme

chessrailbird@gmail.com

08080191289

CHESS TRAINING AS AN EDUCATIONAL TOOL

Many nations already have chess programs featuring as integral parts of their curricula, whether locally or nationally; the number of converts continues to grow. This is not surprising, since although studies on the benefits have not always been conclusive, the overall results have largely been positive. Here in Nigeria, the project is budding. However, a considerable number of schools have taken it up already, most notably in the commercial capital state of Lagos, and now, her in the Federal Capital Territory and environs.

Math and reading are fundamentals these days. However, children need to begin creative problem-solving and collaborative, interactive work early in life to have a firm footing in our fast-paced world of today. If schools do not provide these cognitive building blocks, only children getting such essential training at home will be properly equipped for the future, thus raising inequality.

Countries all over the world, especially in Europe and the former Soviet States like Russia, Armenia, Canada, Azerbaijan and Ukraine, have incorporated chess in school curricula wholly or partially. Recent adherents are Hungary and Norway.  In the United Kingdom alone, the Chess in Schools program has over 25,000 students inscribed. Other notable countries to have applied this concept extensively are Spain, Germany, China, France, and United States of America. Given the foregoing, the assessments of the benefits of chess as an educative tool is no longer in a speculative or experimental phase, but purely and empirically factual.

Numerous researches have been conducted to determine if chess is significantly helpful as an educational tool. Consider the excerpt from a report by El Pais given below:-

"The Catalan government recently endorsed one of the most recent scientific studies on the educational benefits of chess. Designed by the Universities of Girona and Lleida, the report concludes that students who learn chess at school develop their intellect significantly on several levels, and improve their math and reading scores – the two major weak points for Spanish school kids on the Pisa Report, an international student assessment program."

Chess holds a unique fascination. The strategic complexities offer lively minds an immediate challenge and stimulating exercise. It can be played for fun, or with increasing degrees of seriousness up to the highest levels of international competition. The significance of playing chess transcends its relevance as a sport or board game. Apart from the fact that it keeps players mentally alert, other human attributes such as courage, perseverance, focus, determination, sacrifice, creativity, healthy self-esteem and above all, planning can be learned and reinforced by the game. All these qualities, no doubt, are essential elements for successful living.

The Chess In Schools Programme is designed as an educational tool with the aim of encouraging more schools and teachers to provide opportunities for children to learn and play chess and thus reap from its myriad of practical benefits. Chess is a game with no barriers. People of any age, sex, physical ability, and social class can all play on equal terms. Chess is truly a ‘Sport for All’.

Several researches have been conducted over the last few decades to determine the educational benefits of academic chess training for school going kids. A few have been inconclusive mostly because of poorly designed controls or conducting the study and observing perceived or predetermined parameters over inadequately short periods. However, a large host of them have been successful and have led to very interesting and revealing findings.

It will be safe to say with all conviction that chess is beneficial, not just to school age kids, but to everyone who is able to play competitively based on our personal findings as well as the unassailable findings of scores of the afore-mentioned researches. Chess has many educational benefits, giving children intellectual capital and transferable skills such as focus, pattern recognition, discipline, self-control, concentration, spatial awareness and strategic thinking. Education is a key to improving the life chances of children, and chess can be an integral part of that education. An important benefit of the Chess in Schools Programme lies in its potential for education by stealth - chess has the magical effect of making kids calmer, more attentive and surprisingly goal-oriented, thus giving way for all-round efficient and effective learning. The recreational nature of the game can be harnessed to provide enjoyable learning. Evidence clearly demonstrates that chess-playing school pupils significantly outperform their non-playing contemporaries in literacy, numeracy and problem solving skills. Perhaps of greater importance is the fact that young chess players become more confident, have enhanced self-esteem and are more able to organise their thinking and behaviour. Providing children with the opportunity to play chess is a gift they keep for the rest of their lives. Chess is a sociable activity that helps to bring children together and break down barriers, whilst at the same time encouraging a healthy sense of competitiveness.

“Playing chess helps students develop thinking and analyzing skills, concentration, greater self-control, and self-confidence…We have hard evidence that Chess-in-the-Schools works.”

---Bill Clinton

WHY TEACH CHESS IN SCHOOLS?

BENEFITS FOR THE CHILD

1.      Chess teaches us life lessons:-  It only takes a few scores of competitive chess games and perhaps a few very painful loses to realise that chess teaches such life lessons as, ‘look before you leap’, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail’, ‘make good use of every opportunity that comes your way, since they could be far and in between’ etc.  Kids who play competitive chess are in general more mature than their non-playing counterparts in more ways than one. They begin to set goals, make plans, save money, build their confidence, and many other such things with a resolve of adults who have seen it all! This is not unrelated to the fact that chess imitates life. A 9-year old who has played competitive chess since he was six will be, in most cases, calmer, more focused and more ambitious than an average 12-year old child.

2.      Playing chess improves your intelligence quotient significantly:- Chess is considered, erroneously, to be a game for brainiacs and people with already high intelligence quotient. This leads to the chicken-and-egg question; which comes first? Does playing chess make you smarter or do you need to be smart to play chess? Not everyone that plays chess is smart, but playing chess actively over a period of a year is guaranteed to leave you smarter.

3.      Chess enhances a child’s decision-making process:- Children exposed to chess early in life generally learn to make more objective and informed decisions than their peers. Even when taking risks in life, they do so, not arbitrarily, but after properly weighing and/or calculating the pros and cons, benefits and consequences, as well as other influencing factors.

4.      Playing competitive chess improves concentration, focus, determination, perseverance and will-power of kids significantly. It also encourages self-assessment, healthy competition and teamwork.

5.      Chess has a mathematical basis. Mathematics is the tool of science, the language of technology and organised thought.

6.      Chess develops cognitive ability: attention, memory, analysis, and logic, which are all fundamental building blocks for personal growth.

7.      Chess encourages study and preparation as the way to achieve pre-set objectives and for the purpose of individual improvement.

8.      Chess is fun!  Chess is an excellent use of a child’s free time. Besides, the child earns a social tool which can be used for the rest of his/her life. The playing of chess can be exciting and therefore undertaken with enthusiasm.

 

 10.  Chess is an antidote for addiction:- Addiction is not only a problem amongst adults. Addiction, though not regarded as a serious problem in children, usually exists. It is usually not obvious because of the control parents still have over their wards. Research has proven beyond reasonable doubt that actively playing competitive chess eliminates or reduces most addictions. This is partly because chess is mildly addictive itself.

BENEFITS FOR THE PARENTS

1.    Parents get more value for their money

2.    Most parents will pick up the game as long as their children are passionate about it, thus having more quality time with them.

3.    Having a child that is able to make informed decisions, at an early age, after analysing a situation thoroughly is priceless. This will definitely make parenting pleasurable.

BENEFITS FOR THE SCHOOL

1.    Setting up a chess club or introducing it into the school curriculum is relatively cheaper when compared to most other beneficial vocations or clubs in schools. The equipment necessary to play chess:- boards, sets of pieces and clocks– are cheap, durable and readily available.

2.    Since the kids become calmer and more focused, it means learning will be more effective and teachers will be able to cover more ground.

3.    Unruly behaviour and truancy will be reduced as kids always eagerly look forward to the chess playing/learning sessions once they get the hang of it. It's not a hard guess to imagine what they will be doing with most of their idle time.

4.    Schools can register their wards for local and international tournaments which will serve to advertise the school and also earn them some acclaim and pride.

5.    he school can always earn some extra money from registration fees and sale of chess equipment

STUDIES

Schools that encourage chess are reacting to studies like that of New York City-based educational psychologist Stuart Margulies, Ph.D., who in 1996 found that elementary school students in Los Angeles and New York who played chess scored approximately 10 percentage points higher on reading tests than their peers who didn't play. James M. Liptrap, a teacher and chess sponsor at Klein High School in Spring, TX, conducted a similar study in 1997. He found that fifth-graders who played chess scored 4.3 points higher on state reading assessments and 6.4 points higher on math tests than their non-chess-playing peers.

Further proof comes from the doctoral dissertation of Robert Ferguson, executive director of the American Chess School in Bradford, PA. He studied junior-high students, each of whom was enrolled in an activity -- either working with computers, playing chess, taking a creative writing workshop, or playing Dungeons and Dragons -- that was designed to develop critical and creative thinking skills. By the time the students had spent about 60 hours on their chosen activities, the chess players were well ahead of the others in several psychological tests, scoring almost 13 percentage points higher in critical thinking and 35 percentage points higher in creative thinking.

Experts attribute chess players' higher scores to the rigorous workout chess gives the brain. Studies by Dianne Horgan, Ph.D., dean of the graduate school of counselling, educational psychology, and research at the University of Memphis, has found that chess improves a child's visual memory, attention span, and spatial-reasoning ability. And because it requires players to make a series of decisions, each move helps kids learn to plan ahead, evaluate alternatives, and use logic to make sound choices.

Science aside, anecdotal evidence is enough to convince some teachers and parents of chess's benefits -- behavioural as well as cognitive. In 1990, for instance, the Principal at Russell Elementary School in Brownsville, TX, had become concerned about some boys who were being dropped off at school early and getting into mischief. But when she visited J. J. Guajardo's fifth-grade classroom one day, she was surprised to see some of those boys quietly engrossed in chess games. So she asked Guajardo to start a before-school chess program. Soon kids from kindergarten through sixth grade had signed up to play, and by 1993 the Russell team was winning state championships.

"We were a public school with a lot of students from low-income families, but we were beating magnet schools with gifted students," says Guajardo, who's now a high school teacher. "And I noticed that every one of our kids who played chess was also passing the state assessment tests in reading, writing, and math."

Chess training is easy to set up. The equipment are readily available and considerably cheaper than that required for most other sports. Chess could be played almost anywhere - in the school hall, cafeteria or even right there in the classrooms.

CHESS TRAINING MODULES

We offer two different standard modules:-

A. Chess in Curriculum

Here chess is taught like any other subject as part of the compulsory courses the kids must take.

B. Chess Club

Here chess is considered as an extracurricular activity. Only interested kids may partake.

Both modules teach chess using largely the same syllabus. However, a more practical approach is used for the Chess Club Module. The Chess in Curriculum module is more focused on class work with emphasis on the relationship between chess and mathematics as well as logical reasoning.

NB: We also design tailor-made modules to suit the specific needs of your school.

FEES FOR THE STANDARD MODULES

We charge Seven Thousand Naira (N7,000) per child for the first term. Subsequent terms will attract fees of Five Thousand Naira (N5,000). This covers cost for training, rulebooks, workbooks and equipment.

The school gets ten percent (10%) of whatever is paid by the child as partner support since they provide the platform.

Rebates are available for schools with over one hundred (100) participating children.

PARTNER INSTITUTIONS IN FCT AND ENVIRONS

1.    Ave Maria Girls School, Jikwoyi

2.    China Assisted Model Primary School, Nyanya

3.    Nurul-Bayan International School, Wuse

4.    Bold Steps Academy, Nyanya

5.    Bright Beginnings, Mararaba

6.    Model Learning Centre, Jikwoyi

7.    He Reigns Academy, Nyanya

8.    Merry Bell Academy, Jikwoyi

9.    Bethel International School, Nyanya

10. Josan’s International School, Mararaba

11. Margaret Thelma International School, Karu

12. Melchizedek International School, Uke

13. Melchizedek Primary School, Mararaba

14. Asoville International School, Jikwoyi

15. Kingdom Heritage Model School, Jikwoyi

16. Gifted and Talented Academy, Mararaba

17. Hope Jon International School, Mararaba

18. La Vogue International School, Kurudu

19. Spinel International School. Karu

20.  Oprite International School, Kurudu

21.  Redeemers International School, Lugbe