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The Kingsley Chess Experiment

by Carol Skinner

Chess has really caught on at the grade school level, but for some unknown reason the kids don't keep playing beyond that age group.

----Peter Stein, posting to rec.games.chess, 5/23/95

No doubt a web of factors influences the well-documented pattern of young players losing interest in chess in their teen years, just when they are bursting past the cognitive idiosyncrasies of childhood and capable of making great intellectual strides. If the traditional approach to scholastic chess--with its focus on competitive learning experiences--has not adequately fueled the fire inside that propels a lifetime of learning and achievement, then perhaps another--or additional--model is at least worth a try. The Kingsley Chess Experiment, born from our experience with players from kindergarten through fifth grade, represents one effort to enrich the traditional model by emphasizing creative collaboration, in which each student's experience of chess is unique, motivated from within, and respected by a community held together by a love for and deep connection to chess. The experiment evolved--and is evolving still.

Last year, when my husband and I began the chess club at our kindergarten daughter's school, Kingsley Elementary in Evanston, Illinois, we were pleased to be working within a community with a proud record of scholastic chess achievement (Oakton Elementary was twice the state chess champion). We expected that the children at Kingsley might look forward to a friendly rivalry with Oakton. What we found instead was that the children loved coming to chess club, loved playing chess with one another, loved watching their progress marked on our Chess Club Honor Roll, but avoided situations in which their prowess would be tested competitively. Session after session, we continued to feel an overwhelming, gleeful exuberance about the game, and about the fun of sharing it with friends--so we decided to stop and listen. What we heard led us to choose an experimental route in designing our chess club. More than anything else, we wanted to sustain--for their lifetimes, if possible--the high degree of pleasure and satisfaction the children were obviously getting from chess.

Since our own expectations were challenged by the behavior and attitudes of the kids, we went back a step in our planning and tried to identify some principles that might serve as a foundation for the Kingsley Chess Club. These four seemed unshakeable:

1. The richness of chess and its diverse academic and social benefits called for the best effort we could make to include as many students as possible.
2. Children learn best when they have a personal reason to learn; when you reach a child during a "teachable moment" the lesson lasts forever.
3. Children can be trusted to let us know what activities give them pleasure and pride and what activities they wish to avoid.
4. For some children, competition provides a strong motivation to improve chess skills and knowledge.

Based on these principles, our challenges were clear:

To include as many students as we could, we scheduled chess club at the lunch hour as an alternative to recess (actually an attractive option on miserable Midwest winter days--and, to our surprise, even on nice, warm, sunny days). This scheduling allowed the entire student population to give chess a try without worrying about after-school buses or evening or Saturday rides from busy parents. Our first few weeks were "open chess"--nobody even had to sign up. Our rooms were filled to overflowing with an enthusiastic, diverse population. The kids matched up informally with their classmates or friends or with kids they didn't know and played chess with neon pink and yellow plastic pieces on nearly fluorescent cardboard boards (we were able to buy 25 chess sets for $37.00--and the kids loved the glow-in-the-dark htmlect of these sets). Because of overcrowding we did finally require that kids sign up for chess if they wanted to continue to attend these sessions, and our sign-ups grew steadily--up to about 100 within a month, nearly a quarter of the school. Our population was roughly half girls and about 20 % minority: inclusion seemed to be working.

To allow for "teachable moments," we let kids play chess as much as possible--and made sure knowledgeable grown-ups were on hand. The kids in grades 3-5 met every day during their lunch hours; the younger (K-2) kids met three times a week. We introduced the game to newcomers through "micro" games in which only a few of the pieces are used at a time and charted the kids' progress through this series of games, so even the greenest players felt achievement right away. (The parent volunteers seemed to appreciate this approach as well; they felt reasonably confident teaching the discreet skills associated with these micro games.) Perhaps the most successful element of our "just-in-time" learning was an e-mail game we played with students at the American School in Japan. We had several stand-out sessions of focused learning when students debated and collaborated on various moves and strategies in that game.

Trusting kids to shape their own club, we also surveyed the children early on to learn their interests and what they hoped to "get out of" chess club. Virtually all children put "group instruction" way at the bottom of the list of possible ways to learn about chess. Very few were interested in competitive play outside of Kingsley right away, although a number of older kids indicated they might be ready at a later time. Many students wanted a Kingsley-only tournament (in fact, 35 kids played in the First Annual Kingsley Tournament). Everyone who played in the tournament got a (large) medal. We announced local tournaments as we were informed of them. Out of the final 107 sign-ups, three kindergarteners and one third grader were the only ones to play in outside tournaments. About 12 kids tried their hand at competition in a friendly match with a neighboring school.

With so many of our members choosing to avoid--or at least delay--competitive experiences, we began developing alternative ways in which kids could stay motivated and involved and stretch with chess. Perhaps the most successful alternative project was a collaboration on a book about chess, which we undertook in part because of the distinguished history and tradition of chess books and in part because of the research--so much a part of chess culture--the students would have to do to write their essays. The "Kingsley Chess Club Kids' Book of Chess" (as the student contributors decided to call it) contains artwork, written games, articles, made-up games, a chess dictionary, and a number of other contributions that in one way or another stretched a child's participation with chess, fostered a sense of community and chess culture, and nourished self-esteem. The book is more than 130 pages long--no small undertaking for these kids (and several involved parents, a great bonus arising from the project). We self-published the book with a high-quality binding through a grant from the PTA and parent donations so Kingsley mates can proudly take their own copies off the shelves and review them for years to come.

Another well-received project was the writing and performing of a teaching play about chess. A few second graders, with help from a few fourth graders, conceived the idea for the story and helped flesh out the script about a boy who falls asleep while studying a chess position and dreams that the pieces come to life. The youngest children (K-1) made costumes and played the part of these dreamland pieces and pawns who go through their moves in turn. (Even in this setting, the children shied away from competition; they wanted no part of a live chess game because nobody wanted to be captured. They were most happy, however, to demonstrate the moves of each piece.) After our final lessons in checkmate at the end of our regularly scheduled chess club, we spent the last weeks of the school year cutting out construction paper shields, cleaning up glitter, making pikes, designing swords and crowns, taping black and white poster board squares together for the giant chessboard, and rehearsing the play, which was narrated by the older kids. The play, "David Knight's Dream," which is included in our book, was also the featured entertainment at our Awards Night and is the vehicle we plan to use to kick off chess club for the new crop of kindergarteners this second year. In addition to energizing the children, the play generated strong interest among the parents. A new generation of parent volunteers came to the fore as a result of the play, and the large turn-out at Awards Night was a promising sign for the volunteer pool for the next school year.

As we begin our second year the Kingsley Chess Experiment is still too young to evaluate with any certainty. But we continue to feel such exuberance from the children, and such support from the parents--and the school--that we expect in our second year to continue the search for collaborative learning projects for students who prefer them. This year we have a web page for our club on which we hope to encourage students' analysis and commentary of their own as well as grandmasters' games. We also hope to bring the vital, distinguished, pioneering electronic chess world within reach of our students through links to enriching sites. Little by little, at their own pace and in their own remarkably refreshing individualized ways, we see the Kingsley kids developing a collaborative--we hope lifetime--relationship with chess. The thrill of competition and its motivating power is just exactly right for many kids--my husband when he was younger, for example, and the three children so far at Kingsley who have qualified for the chess team and are eager to compete beyond Kingsley walls. But for other children, the collaborative model seems to have succeeded--at least so far--in keeping enthusiasm high and also advancing chess knowledge and appreciation, albeit at a more relaxed pace. Although our route is different from many others in scholastic chess, we hope to reach the same goals, and along our sometimes winding path we hope children will come to see that the chess world--with all its richness and artistry--is inhabited by people who let the fire inside take them where it would.