Chess Crazy.

St. Edward School has a variety of chessboards, including space chess.; Chess appeals to the highest levels of critical thinking, says St. Edward School principal Andy Cipro.; Grade 2 student Margo McLea moves her piece on a giant chessboard at St. Edward School in Jordan.; Christian Balanowski, left, and Jacob Tawil, right, square off in a game of chess at St. Edward School.; St. Edward School students and chess enthusiasts, clockwise, top left, Warren Lament, Adam Foster, Josh Zizek and Annika Urrego. The Jordan school is conducting a pilot program for a chess-centric curriculum. Staff photo by Denis Cahill

Chess crazy; All the pieces fall into place for students at St.Edward School

From the St. Catherines Standard

The dedication to an ancient game is evident even before walking through the front doors of St. Edward School in Jordan.”Chess tournament Thursday!” says a poster in the multi-coloured scrawl of a child. “Try your best!”

Inside, the halls are lined with chessboards. There’s space chess. Racing chess. San Francisco chess. Christmas chess.

In the library is an eight-by-eight-metre chessboard with oversized pieces. The children huddle around it when the recess bell rings.

“We get a big chuckle out of the students discussing strategy,” principal Andy Cipro said.

Kindergarten students are taught the difference between rooks and queens. Fourth graders learn in the classroom how many squares a knight can move. (“It can be an upright L, or an L on its belly, or an L on its back,” Cipro explains during classroom teaching sessions.) Because at St. Edward – a school that fares among the best in Niagara on standardized tests – math, literacy, playtime and work time all come back to chess.

The small-town school is conducting a pilot program for a chess-centric curriculum. Cipro, a veteran educator who has taken the chess craze board-wide, first thought of implementing one when he taught at St. Theresa School in St. Catharines. A pair of students told him one Monday, breathlessly, that they’d visited a weekend chess club. Cipro, an amateur chess enthusiast himself, started a chess club at the school.

“I thought it would be fun,” he said.

Twenty-eight years later, he said, it is much more than that.

The more students have played chess over the years, Cipro said, the more positive changes he has noticed in their personalities and learning skills.

Read Story in it’s entirety here.