MiniChess

Shelanti has offered the MiniChess programme in school, as an enrichment programme, for the last 4 years. 

We were in search of a programme which would target specific learning areas and cater to our learners’ specific needs, outside of the academic curriculum. Enter MiniChess! We aimed to teach our learners the skills to prepare them for life-long learning: skills such as critical and strategic thinking; approach to task; problem solving and group work, to name a few. These have also been identified as the essential skills for children to succeed in the future. The game of chess has many benefits in itself. These include educational, cognitive and social benefits.

MiniChess is organized into structured lessons, with detailed lesson plans in the Teacher’s Manuals and attractive Project Books for the learners. The programme uses tried and tested methods for teaching through play. The learning process is broken down into small steps, building confidence while keeping it fun. This includes basic skills, for example: colouring, cut and paste, form recognition, simple pattern recognition, letter and number recognition, writing skills and basic mathematics skills.

Shelanti took the programme even further, by introducing whole brain-geared exercises to further cement each concept, without changing the MiniChess programme itself. In other words, each lesson was adapted to suit the needs of our specific learners. For example: