Eastern Shore Scholastic Chess, Inc. (ESSC) is a 501(c)(3) entity with the mission to help public schools establish state-, locally-, and community-supported chess clubs.
Our current project is with Accomack County Public Schools on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. ACPS has recognized the academic and social benefits of chess to the student, and the consistency of the life-skills learned in chess with both STEM and Virginia Employment Readiness Skills educational objectives.
A curriculum has been developed, based on the ChessKid.com system of incremental mastery of skills, augmented with teaching aids both borrowed from other successful programs and developed internally. This will make for a consistent program across schools which is easily learned by coaches. In areas such as ACPS, distant from other chess programs, both local interscholastic competitions and on-line competitions with schools and individual students from around the world become possible for the first time. Our curriculum can solve the problem of instability at many schools: when the sponsor/coach of a chess club no longer sponsors, typically the club dies. Since any teacher now can easily coach beginners to play, club sponsorship can be replaced readily. The beginners' curriculum also lends itself to incorporation in the elementary classroom on "special" days, so that every child can be introduced to the lifetime benefits of chess.
Anyone may create a Basic Membership on Chesskid.com for free. Each new school chess club member in our ACPS program receives a Gold Membership in ChessKid.com, which allows unlimited use and much broader participation, including in on-line tournament play with other Chesskids worldwide. Kids with these free Gold memberships must use them or lose them. Chesskid provides extensive safety measures for kids, and management tools for coaches to track each kid's progress as an individual and as part of the group. By these quantitative measures, kids also may see their performance relative to the rest of the group. Chesskid has over 100 "levels" with bite-sized lessons, with mastery demonstration required for advancement, plus a large library of instructional videos. Eastern Shore Scholastic Chess has also adopted, and adapted, the clever ability-level subgrouping created by the Hampton Roads Chess Association, to help kids and coaches understand where they are, and what must be demonstrated to move up the "food chain" of chess proficiency.
Our current project is with Accomack County Public Schools on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. ACPS has recognized the academic and social benefits of chess to the student, and the consistency of the life-skills learned in chess with both STEM and Virginia Employment Readiness Skills educational objectives.
A curriculum has been developed, based on the ChessKid.com system of incremental mastery of skills, augmented with teaching aids both borrowed from other successful programs and developed internally. This will make for a consistent program across schools which is easily learned by coaches. In areas such as ACPS, distant from other chess programs, both local interscholastic competitions and on-line competitions with schools and individual students from around the world become possible for the first time. Our curriculum can solve the problem of instability at many schools: when the sponsor/coach of a chess club no longer sponsors, typically the club dies. Since any teacher now can easily coach beginners to play, club sponsorship can be replaced readily. The beginners' curriculum also lends itself to incorporation in the elementary classroom on "special" days, so that every child can be introduced to the lifetime benefits of chess.
Anyone may create a Basic Membership on Chesskid.com for free. Each new school chess club member in our ACPS program receives a Gold Membership in ChessKid.com, which allows unlimited use and much broader participation, including in on-line tournament play with other Chesskids worldwide. Kids with these free Gold memberships must use them or lose them. Chesskid provides extensive safety measures for kids, and management tools for coaches to track each kid's progress as an individual and as part of the group. By these quantitative measures, kids also may see their performance relative to the rest of the group. Chesskid has over 100 "levels" with bite-sized lessons, with mastery demonstration required for advancement, plus a large library of instructional videos. Eastern Shore Scholastic Chess has also adopted, and adapted, the clever ability-level subgrouping created by the Hampton Roads Chess Association, to help kids and coaches understand where they are, and what must be demonstrated to move up the "food chain" of chess proficiency.