Chess Curriculum

Continuing with Google Autocompletes CIS, Google's most interesting suggestion was 'chess in school curriculum'. When I started looking at this phrase, Google's autocomplete suggested the further refinement 'chess curriculum pdf'. Since this promised a single, distributable document with a complete chess curriculum, it indeed sounded like a good idea. Let's look at Google's top five suggestions.

No.1: ChessKid.com's Curriculum! • ChessKid.com is a spinoff of Chess.com and the download link leads directly to that site. The downloaded ZIP file creates five sections with a total of 20 lessons. The introduction says,

With the ChessKid.com Curriculum we set out to create an original, creative and extremely "kid friendly" way of learning the game of chess! While acquiring knowledge of the rules, basic fundamentals, as well as advanced strategies and tactics – coaches and beginning chess players alike will enjoy working through these lessons.

No.2: Susan Polgar's FREE Chess Training Guide / Curriculum (chess-game-strategies.com) • Susan Polgar is one of the best known names in scholastic chess, so this looked promising. The link points to susanpolgar.blogspot.com, which in turn redirects to chessdailynews.com.

Over 225,000 copies of my "Chess Training Guide / Curriculum for Teachers and Parents" have been distributed to chess clubs, chess organizations, parents, teachers, and coaches, etc. in over 120 countries since 2006. It is available absolutely FREE. Please feel free to use it to promote chess everywhere.

The link here leads to depts.ttu.edu/spice, which gives 'The page you requested could not be found'. I tried to find another copy of the Polgar material, but failed in the time I had available. I'll come back to this another time.

No.3: Teaching Chess the Easy and Fun Way with Mini-Games. • This 84-page PDF introduces itself with

Teaching Chess the Easy and Fun Way with Mini-Games • Copyright © 2011 Innovative Educators, LLC • Authors: Kathy Price, M.A., Andre Zupans

No.4: David MacEnulty - SchoolChess.com • This 21-page PDF starts,

Think Like A King : A Curriculum Guide for Scholastic Chess • by David MacEnulty • Food for Thought Software, Inc. © 1998

No.5: Chess Lesson Plans for Teachers - AXD Faro • This six-page PDF signed 'Ali Nihat Yazici' appears to be a preliminary document from ten years ago. I last mentioned Yazici in FIDE's 'Chess in Schools' 2014. Like No.2: Susan Polgar above, this deserves a separate look.

(To be continued...)