Chess Lab › For schools
For schools, academies and clubs
A chess lesson that is also a maths lesson.
The Chess Lab is a ready classroom tool. A teacher who has never played chess can use it tomorrow morning. Pupils need no accounts, and there is nothing to install.
One lesson, twenty minutes
Every game is built to fit a single short slot — a starter, a club session or the last part of a lesson.
- Read the storyTwo minutes, aloud. Each game has one — a legend, a champion or a moment in history.
- Play the gameTen minutes. On one projector with the class calling the answers, or on pupils’ own phones.
- Talk about itFive minutes. The teacher note gives three questions that turn the game into the lesson.
What it covers
19 games and 12 stories, arranged by subject.
| Mathematics | Coordinates, the four operations, fractions, time, powers of two, mean, median, mode and range, equations with one unknown. |
|---|---|
| Logic and reasoning | Elimination, working backwards, systematic search, testing a claim against evidence. |
| Computing | Sequencing commands, repetition, and debugging a program that does not work. |
| Science habits | Predict, test, change one thing, test again — on a chess piece the pupil invents. |
| History and geography | How a game travelled from India through Persia and Baghdad to Europe, and what changed on the way. |
| Language | Building an exact sentence: subject, verb, object, nothing missing. Twelve short stories for reading aloud. |
| Art and memory | Reflection and rotation on a grid; following directions in the mind with no board. |
Made for a real classroom
- A teacher note with every gameThe learning goal, three questions to ask, and an activity that needs no screen. Each note prints on one page.
- Works with what you haveOne projector, a computer room, pupils’ phones — or no devices at all, using the no-screen activity.
- Every level is checkedEach puzzle is dealt fresh and tested by the lab before a pupil sees it, so no child is handed one that cannot be solved.
- Our own workEvery game, level and story was written by 8by8verse. It is designed to sit alongside your syllabus and any chess-in-schools programme you already follow.
- For academies and clubsA signed-in player’s stars are kept with the rest of their training record.
- One guide throughoutAshta, the saffron knight, asks every question. In Sanskrit, ashta means eight — the eight squares a knight reaches.
Bring the Chess Lab to your school
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