Ajedrez para la convivencia (Chess for harmony)

This program aims to incorporate chess as an educational strategy in the "María Espínola", centers of model and experimental character, which has established the current educational administration as a pilot experience of a new educational model. The program works with the first 3 grades of these centers, as an extracurricular activity. The main objective is to contribute to the strengthening of a government policy established as a pilot experience, which tends to evaluate new pedagogical conceptions that would permeate, if evaluated as relevant, the whole system at a later stage. Chess is used to introduce innovative strategies aimed at strengthening learning based on concrete experiences, interdisciplinary work, and projects, and particularly, to contemplate the students’ intrinsic motivation in the task developed. In all these respects, the ludic nature of the game is used as a form of connection with the elements of reality, and chess was chosen in particular for its links with the history of culture; those are powerful elements for the development of this approach.