How to Conduct an Online Lesson with ChessKid

Back in March my chess program was mere days away from preparing to attend the New York State Chess Championship. The Wednesday before we were set to travel was when States was cancelled due to the pandemic. That Friday my school announced we will be transitioning to online learning for the foreseeable future.

I knew I had to come up with something fast to ensure the strong chess culture would not wither away! We had built it up over many years and the kids deserved to keep their team and club going. Thankfully, ChessKid came to the rescue.

Here's how I used ChessKid to hold my online chess lessons:

Typical Lesson Structure - Time length: 1 hour

To start I would meet with around 30 kids via a third party program like Zoom or bluejeans. Several of these third-party programs are offering free premium accounts to teachers/schools.

Start of Class (5 minutes)

We begin by talking to the kids and checking in how they were doing. The kids were missing their daily in person lessons, so I wanted to provide them time to talk among each other and feel connected. Another good technique was to give them either a guided question to talk about ("If you could name a chess opening, what name would you give it?") or I would show off a great tactic played by a club member from the previous week.

Leaderboard Review (3-5 minutes)

The first thing the kids would see when they came to my normal classroom was the puzzle leaderboard, sorted by the amount of puzzles attempted in the past week. They say chess is 95% tactics. You can know a lot about the game of chess, but if you have bad board vision and do not see your checks, captures, and threats you’re going to lose a lot of games! I had the standing expectation for the chess club kids to do 100+ puzzles/week.

(Note that a pass rate of 45-60% is a feature not a bug! Kids are automatically given tactics that are challenging but not overwhelming.)

My school's all-time leaderboard, sorted by attempts.

Lesson (10-15 minutes)

Sometimes I would use the ChessKid analysis board to teach an online lesson or review a kid's game. Other times I would ask the kids to warm up by watching a specific video, completing a lesson, or by doing some puzzles.

The kids and I going over a game back at an in person tournament

Play Chess! (30 minutes)

As a kid the primary way I learned chess was by playing my friends in chess club. I didn’t have access to a great resource like ChessKid where you can do online lessons, watch videos, complete tactics, and play online. Playing many chess games is one of the most important ways for kids to learn fast. Conveniently, it’s also the kids' favorite part of chess club!

Again, I would do different things here on different days. Sometimes I would have kids play each other via the friends tab in the fast chess server. Other times, I would have kids play the other ChessKids online by clicking the 5 minute, 10 minute, or 15 minute button when they enter the fast chess server. My favorite thing to do would be to create a tournament for the kids.

Pro-tip: If you choose 5 rounds and 5 minute games, then that tournament will typically last around an hour (although I would say goodbye half way through).

The Fast Chess server (play vs kid) is where kids can play each other, play other ChessKids online, or join the tournaments that you have created for them.

While the kids played their games I would put on my best announcer voice while sharing my screen and going from game to game. I would make a point to broadly say what a kid was doing well if they were winning or losing. For example I wanted my kids to develop their pieces at the start of the game, and I did not want them to move their knight five times at the start of the game. So I would say things like "I notice John is winning his game. He’s also developed all of his pieces and castled!" Or if they were losing, I would say "I notice Valerie is losing her game. She also moved her knight three times and has not developed her other pieces or castled."

Before the pandemic I had always viewed ChessKid primarily as a resource for kids to go home and learn chess on their own. Thankfully, it is also the perfect tool to conduct online lessons!

Do you run a chess club with 20+ kids? Email [email protected] for help getting set up on ChessKid. If you run a program with 100+ kids also check out our Enterprise accounts!