Top 3 Ways I Use ChessKid In My Private Lessons

My name is Maria Manelidou; I am a chess coach working in London, and the founder of Chess Rising Stars. Today I would like to talk about how I use ChessKid with my private students.

1. Video lessons as homework: Reviewing material in between lessons is essential if you want what you’ve learnt to stick, but setting traditional "homework" turns chess lessons into an extension of school; what might have been fun for the kids becomes a chore. Instead, I like to pick a video lesson from ChessKid’s extensive library related to what I have taught that day, or what I plan to teach next week, and suggest that the student has a look at it. Watching the video doesn’t feel like work, but still reinforces the learning.

WFM Maria Manelidou and a ChessKid-loving student.

2. Playing practice games: Always playing against the same small group of friends at school can get boring, and is not ideal for learning. ChessKid solves this by giving children the ability to play games against other children all around the world, at any time. Kids get excited thinking they could be playing someone on the other side of the world, and the varied opposition exposes them to a wide range of plans and ideas.

Looks like this young ChessKid is a fan of Fast Chess!

3. Reviewing games: I always look through my students’ ChessKid games for instructive moments. This is easy to do on the website, but I find the option to download games as a pgn file particularly useful. With just a few clicks I can have the games in ChessBase or another tool, which allows me to analyze them in depth. This also provides plenty of material to discuss in lessons.