The Chess Queen

Learning while playing games has proven to be a successful way of learning. This method is used and appreciated by more and more schools world wide. This modern idea of teaching was not easily accepted in Sicily where people struggle with problems like illiteracy, poverty and a high rate of unemployment. In Gela - a town in the south of sicily, Carmelita Di Mauro, a teacher who created a revolutionary teaching method inspired by chess, was extremely challenged introducing her modern way of teaching in a relative conservative and traditional context. However, the method of Carmelita has proven to be very effective with children, especially pupils who have difficulties learning mathematics.  Carmelita implemented a sequence of steps allowing pupils to interpret the chessboard as a series of logic boxes. These colored boxes, and their specific numbers, help the brain creating associations, which are useful when storing and remembering information. Moreover, this modern and playful way of teaching learns students how to deal with competition, improves concentration while the students are having a lot of fun. Thanks to this method a lot of Carmelita's students became extremely talented in mathematics and chess champions. One student even made it to the chess world championships.