Danbury second-graders play chess to sharpen math skills
By Eileen FitzGerald
STAFF WRITER
Article Last Updated: 10/23/2007 04:20:51 AM EDT
Seven-year-old Noelia Espinal captured a knight and Rafaela Padilha had a rook. They both knew who was ahead. The knight was worth more points than the rook.
The girls were deep in a chess game during their Monday math lesson at South Street School in Danbury.
“It’s fun,” Noelia said as she prepared to take a pawn from the chess mat. “Because you get to win. You try to get the king.”
Their teacher, Craig Fay, has taught his students chess for the past three years and played the game with them once a week after lunch.
This year, the school district is piloting a program in Fay’s class with guest instructor James Santorelli, who teaches math using the game of chess once a week. His curriculum reinforces basic math skills like counting, adding and subtracting but expands to such areas as estimating movements, graphing and recording game moves.
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“The knight was worth more points than the rook.”
?
@christopher: indeed, looks like they need some extra lessons. 🙂
No wonder we stink at math.
That’s right because it depends of the position of knight on the board. The rook is a passive piece and it values grow in the final fase of the play.
The teacher wants to teach the children to play chess – and creates a post hoc rationalisation of this fact.
There are many more effective and more fun ways to learn maths. So let’s not kid ourselves that chess is the main road to mathematical skill.