Chess for Social Skills – Summer Course 2023
Ficheall volunteers will be faciltating the course, Chess for Social Skills, in education centres throughout the country this summer. The course is approved by the DES for 3 EPV days.
The course has already been delivered to hundreds of teachers around Ireland since 2016. Teachers with zero knowledge of chess are still invited to sign up as chess will be taught from the basics before progressing to cover methods of teaching chess in a primary school and how it can extend to develop and teach students key social skills – respect, accepting defeat, forward planning, giving and receiving compliments, teamwork, decision making, patience and resilience.
“As a total beginner to chess, I found this course so worthwhile, after a week I have the knowledge and confidence to start chess classes with my class. I actually can’t wait to get it up and running, I’m addicted!”
The summer chess course will cover
• methods of teaching the rules of chess pieces to classroom-based or SET groups of students
• methods of teaching checkmate to classroom-based or SET groups of students
• chess games to develop teamwork skills between students
• chess games to develop forward planning and decision-making skills among students
• chess games to develop acceptance and resilience skills in students
• numeracy-based problem-solving chess puzzles
• establishing and using an online platform for student to play and improve their chess ability
Previous CPD Courses
See below for evening courses we have run in the past.
Check back in Sept/Oct each year for info on any upcoming courses.
Chess for Beginners: Ficheall
February 2023 – Kilkenny Ed Centre
Kilkenny Education Centre – 23-02-2023 7:00 pm
Chess for Beginners is an extremely hands-on and teacher-centred CPD course. Chess is a growing pastime in Irish Primary schools with over 200 schools now joined the Ficheall.ie network of teachers promoting chess in Primary schools. It is an excellent hobby for students (and teachers) for rainy days and promotes a variety of social and cognitive skills such as respect, forward planning, problem-solving, decision-making, accepting defeat, understanding resilience and developing a growth mind-set when exploring a new skill; all of which are explicitly addressed in the free beginner lessons available to participants.
Teachers will have the opportunity over three face-to-face sessions (Thursday 23rd February, Thursday 9th March and Thursday 23rd March 2023, from 7 – 9p.m. each evening) to learn the basics of chess which provide the perfect foundation knowledge to use the Ficheall Beginner Chess lessons in their classroom, if desired.
Some testimonials from teachers who completed the course previously:
- “A course that when completed you can actually say you have learned an entire new skill! Amazing!”
- “This is a fun course!”
- “Teach your students good sportsmanship without PE!”
To ask any questions about this course email: kilkenny@ficheall.ie