Frequently asked questions

Absolutely! 

As a teacher or coach, you are automatically placed in the teacher environment upon registration. However, there is also an option to follow the Chessity learning path yourself! You can do this by switching environments at the top right of the screen. Click on your account name at the top right. Here you can change environments by clicking on 'play'. You will now see the same environment as users with an individual account. This way, you gain access to all lessons. 

Do you want to continue teaching afterwards? You can switch back at the same place. 

The table below shows the rights per role:

As you can see, the Administrator has the most rights. As an Administrator, you can decide who you want to grant access to which rights. 

Your class discovers during the workshop how fun learning chess is. But it doesn't stop there. Learning chess stimulates various brain functions. It improves concentration and stimulates creativity. Additionally, kids train problem-solving, dealing with mistakes and setbacks, and developing spatial awareness. Research shows that children who learn chess score better in both math and language. 

In the brochure about school chess you can read more about the (brain) effects of chess. 

Students only see the level they are active in (and the levels they have already completed). The next level appears when:

• the student has played the very last lesson OR
• all stickers of the level have been obtained OR
• the exam has been passed (also via an entry test)

The best way to unlock the next level is as follows.

Step 1: Try to get at least 2 stars on all 40 lessons.

Step 2: Pass the exam successfully.

Step 3: You are ready for the next level!

The material at the new level might still be a bit difficult. Try to get 3 stars on as many lessons as possible in the previous level first. This way, you ensure you can handle the material at the new level. 

Students’ settings are managed in the Student Management tool (accessible via the Coach tab in the menu bar). This tool shows a list of all your students and their settings. Below you can read about the settings and how to use the student management tool.

1. Add a student to your student management who already has a Chessity account. See also: Is it possible to convert an existing account into a student account?
   
   
2. Add a new student. You activate one of your purchased accounts and set it up for the student.
   
   
3. Pupils who have been inactive for a longer period of time are no longer shown in the student list. This button makes them visible again.
   
   
4.  Sort the student list by user name (alphabetically ascending or descending) or use the search field to search for a user name.
   
   
5. Sort the student list by name (first name alphabetically ascending or descending) or search for a name using the search field.
   
   
6. Add a note.
   
   
7. Sort the list by group (alphabetically ascending or descending) or search for a group using the search field.
   
   
8. Extend the premium account period by 12 months. These 12 months will commence after the original expiry date. In order to renew an account, you need to have enough premium accounts in stock.
   
   
9. Change your student's password or personal information. 
   
   
10. Turns the Simplified mode (the children's learning environment) on or off. Default setting: Simplified mode on. See also: What is the Beginner mode?
    
    
11. Unlock all lessons for an advanced student. He or she can skip easy lessons. Our advice is to be reluctant in unlocking lessons. Default setting: all lessons locked.
    
    
12. Shield the student from contacts with strangers. By ticking Protect student, you ensure that children can only communicate within their own group. Default setting: Protected status on.
    
    
13. Enable or disable the chat feature. The chat feature is a popular function within classes but sometimes leads to unwanted behavior. We recommend that you allow this function to be performed under normal circumstances, as it provides children with an important 21st-century skill. Default setting: chat enabled.
    
    
14. Lock or unlock the Arena. With a locked arena the student must first get 5 stars (per week) to be able to play games in the Arena. Default setting: Arena locked with star lock.
    
    
15. Enable or disable Chessto tasks. Chessto keeps track of which lesson(s) still have to be made in order to get a new sticker on the way to the exam. Once a week, Chessto distributes these lessons to the pupils as a special mission. If a student already has been assigned tasks by their teacher, Chessto does not hand out missions. Default setting: Chessto tasks on.
    
    
16. Use this green button to show or hide the 'Groups' widget.
    
    
17. This button allows you to purchase one or more new student accounts, which you can activate when you need to. Above the button you can see how many accounts you still have in stock.
    
    
18. Use this widget to divide your students into groups.
    
    
19. Use this widget to remove students from groups.
    
    
20. This is a useful feature if you want to change settings for multiple students in one go. Manually tick the students in question, or tick ‘Select all’ to select all students at once.
    
    
21. The most important settings are briefly explained here.

In the manage students section, various settings are explained here >>.

Additionally, the most useful tool is, of course, the workshop tool, which allows you to easily start any chess lesson.

But you may have discovered that Chessity offers many more handy tools. These are the trainer tools. For teachers, we advise keeping these tools in the box for now. But for coaches, they can be very useful, as chess coaches can use them to give their own twist to chess lessons. 

Below are the trainer tools briefly explained:

Expert Dashboard
This is an important trainer tool that is also handy for teachers. The progress of all students is detailed here. You can see exactly how many stars all students have earned for each lesson.

Demo chessboard
This allows a coach to set up chess positions on the board. Moreover, you can use colors and arrows to explain important chess concepts.

Task manager
This allows you to assign certain lessons as tasks to students. The student can find these lessons by scrolling down on the learn page.

Exam manager
The exam manager is also a handy tool for teachers. It provides detailed insight into students' performance on exams.

Create workbooks
It might be that you don't have access to a computer or laptop at a club. With this tool, you can create workbooks so students can still work on exercises. After selecting lessons, you receive a PDF that you can print. 

The little robot Chessto is designed to relieve and support teachers. It may be small and cute, but it's a very powerful tool!

While the children independently learn with good substantive instruction from Chessto and feedback from the program, the teacher has all the time for personal attention to individual students. This can be in the form of coaching children in their own learning process (teachers) or chess-specific instruction (chess trainers), or both.

For a student, it's just nice to be helped by Chessto; exactly with the things he or she finds difficult or doesn't fully understand yet. As often as needed and in the way that this individual student learns best.

This is what Chessto does:

1. Explain and teach

How does the knight's move work? Can you also make long moves with a queen? And how do you capture an opponent's piece without being captured yourself? In the Pawn level, Chessto acts as a virtual chess teacher helping children learn chess.

Also in the  teaching and practicing of checkmate and defending against mate Chessto plays a prominent role. Not only does it help children understand the concept of 'mate' well, but it also systematically elicits relevant prior knowledge. This helps process and remember the new information better. Children learn to automate the thinking steps, allowing them to apply what they've learned better in their chess games.

Chessto doesn't mind explaining things three times, ten times, or even twenty times. It never loses patience and is always helpful and cheerful. However, the little robot is deliberately programmed so that children cannot just sit back and let Chessto do the work.

2. Coaching in the learning process

Chessto keeps track of exactly which lesson(s) each student still needs to complete to earn a new sticker on the way to the mock exam. It coaches the students in their learning process.

Once a week, Chessto assigns these lesson(s) as a special mission to the students. Mission accomplished? Then a new sticker shines on the homepage, and the student is one step closer to his or her diploma.

Good to know: if the teacher has already assigned tasks to a student, Chessto does not assign missions. 
The teacher can also choose to disable the distribution of missions by Chessto in the coach tool Student Management:

Chessto tasks that have been open for more than a month are automatically deleted.

No, Chessity does not have a traditional teacher manual.

First of all because there are huge differences in the way schools and chess clubs organize their chess lessons and the methods chess teachers use. Chessity is such a flexible teaching method that schools and chess academies can use it as they see fit. The focus is always on the individual learning process and development of the student; the teacher primarily has a coaching role to play.

Modular knowledge database for chess coaches

Make sure you read the questions in the various sections of these FAQ. They provide a lot of information about the teaching concepts and the use of Chessity, and the way coaches can organize the system for their students. If there are new questions, we add them to the FAQ. That way, we build a modular database for chess coaches.

Information about creating, setting or purchasing (additional) student accounts can be found in the ‘Accounts’ section.

If you have specific questions or want to share your own experiences, your suggestions, your successes or your doubts with us, feel free to contact us. We are here to help you. Besides, your feedback can help other coaches and helps us improve our product.

The role of the teacher in Chessity is primarily a coaching role. Students go through the lessons independently and at their own pace. The method adapts in various ways to the level and learning style of the student. This happens 'under the hood', allowing the student to focus on practicing, while gradually learning better and faster.

As a teacher, you can track your students' progress in a student tracking system. This also gives you insight into how the performance of individual students can be improved.

In a traditional classroom instruction model, the teacher explains, for example, the knight's move or the double attack to the whole group. Then all students work on exercises and practice. The teacher reviews the exercises and provides individual or class-wide feedback and additional explanations if necessary.

In a Chessity lesson, students encounter lessons on the knight's move and double attack at their own time. They complete the exercises. If they make mistakes, they receive immediate feedback from the program. The teacher can see in the student tracking system which children are struggling with the knight's move or the double attack. While other children continue with their lessons, the teacher can bring these children together to provide extra explanations or advise them to first achieve a third star on the respective lesson or - in the case of the knight's move - play the game Jumping Jack for extra practice.

As a coaching teacher, you guide your students on their own learning path. Learning chess has truly become personalized.

Yes, indeed! After a student creates an account, they are given two choices:

We advise most students to choose the left option. Students then get started right away and begin at the beginning. If a student already has considerable chess experience, they can choose the right option. The student then starts with an entry test.

The task in this entry test is always to find the best move. Based on the student's performance, it is determined where they may begin. It could very well be that a student starts at the white-rook level. 

Unlock all lessons

It is also possible to unlock all lessons for a student. They do not need to unlock lessons first but can start with a lesson of their choice. 

You can unlock all lessons as a teacher in the manage students. At the bottom, you can select a series of actions. Choose: unlock all lessons, check a student, and click oké. This student can now choose lessons at will.

Note!

Children often overestimate their own level (a lot). They then start with lessons that are too difficult, leading to frustration. Taking a step back in level is difficult for many children. Our advice is to be very cautious with unlocking all lessons! Using the entry test is the best method to quickly get children working at their own level.

Chessity is designed in such a way that students have freedom in the pace at which they take lessons. A student can only move on to the next lesson once he has completed the previous lesson. As soon as a star is earned for a lesson, the next lesson is unlocked.

Students can choose for themselves whether they want to continue with the next lesson or whether they want to get three stars on the current lesson first.

If students go through their lessons too fast (with few stars), the system will ensure that they are slowed down and first deepen their skills.

For every fifth lesson (the games with mix tasks), a blockage is built in: students who have only one star for the previous lessons have to return to these lessons in order to earn more stars.

This automatically prevents a pupil from moving too fast into the depths while they have not yet sufficiently mastered a skill or grasped a concept.

In the student monitoring system (Coach - Dashboard) you can see exactly which lessons your students are at and how many stars they have passed. This information helps you to guide and coach your students in their learning process.

To improve in chess, it's important for children to practice and train regularly. This is best achieved when they can train in a fun way and enjoy it. That's why Chessity uses game-based learning.

Motivating reward systems

Chessity also motivates children in another way, namely through an effective reward system. The brain is very sensitive to rewards. Rewards stimulate learning and openness to change. If a reward follows a well-done exercise - even if it's just the sound of a ringing cash register, as in the Pawn-level lessons - it teaches the brain that something worked and that you should tackle such a problem the same way next time.

Reward stimuli in Chessity

Chessity is full of audiovisual and other reward stimuli for the brain. Ringing coins, mini-games where frogs and rockets win a race for you, stars you earn, lessons you unlock, and real games where the reward follows in the form of a win.

In the progress towards an exam, the student sees 'reward stickers'. These stickers represent the sub-areas a student must master before they can take the exam:

When a student has sufficiently mastered a part, the sticker is displayed in color on their start screen. 

Compact levels, quick progression to exams

The levels in Chessity consist of compact lesson series of 40 lessons each. This allows students to earn their diploma in a relatively short time, which is highly motivating to continue learning and also encourages other children in the group to earn their diploma. As students quickly progress from Pawn to Knight to Bishop level, and so on, the energy in the class remains high.

Level visible in avatar

You can see your highest achieved level in your avatar. If you have passed the Pawn diploma, a pawn appears next to your profile picture. Passed the Bishop exam? Then a bishop appears next to the photo. The level indication is a virtual status symbol and is super motivating.

Also in the Arena, the level is visible. Maybe a Knight player can beat a player with Queen level!

In student accounts, the Play section is locked by default with a 'star lock'.

In a locked arena, the student must first earn 5 stars per week to be able to play. This ensures that students complete lessons and don't just play.

By hovering the mouse over the Play button, the screen shows how many stars the student still needs to unlock the Arena:

Prefer no star lock?

In the manage students tool, you can set per student whether the arena should have a lock through a star lock or not:

Only users with a coach account see this tab. It shows exactly what your students have written in the Café and who they have been in contact with.

You can do this in the tool Manage Student Accounts (accessible via the Coach tab in the menu bar).

Click on the icon with the pencil behind the student's name to change the email address.

Children practicing in the simplified view see seven stickers (badges) on their home screen. These correspond to the seven learning objectives of the Pawn level. Once a student sufficiently masters a learning objective, the sticker is displayed in color. When a child has earned all the stickers, they automatically gain access to the exam. This way, children can see at a glance how many stickers they still need to earn before they can take the exam.

For this, use the Task manager tool.

Note: the Task tool is an expert tool mainly used by subject teachers and teachers with chess knowledge, who sometimes want to deviate from the normal learning path. Normally, as a teacher, you don't need to assign tasks yourself, because Chessto does that. He monitors which lesson(s) a child still needs to do to get a new sticker on the way to the next exam. Once a week, Chessto assigns these lessons as a 'special mission' (task). Chessto's tasks are personalized and student-specific: the student receives exactly the tasks they need for their progress. (See also: How does Chessto guide students before and after an exam?)

How do you assign tasks to students?

The Task tool has a workflow in three steps. When you open the tool, you always see which tasks you have assigned to your students. If you are using the tool for the first time, there are, of course, no assigned tasks yet. Then you start with step 2: Select tasks.

The first thing you see are all the lesson levels available in Chessity:

By clicking on a level, you open an overview with all the lessons and games of that level. You can then select the lesson(s) you want the student(s) to practice. Indicate how many times the lesson should be done (between 1 and 5 times):

In this example, only lessons from the Pawn level are chosen, but it is also possible to select lessons from multiple levels.

After selecting the lessons, click on Select students (step 3).

A list of all your students is now displayed. Select the students who should complete the chosen lessons. In the dropdown menu under Groups, you will find all the groups you have created in the dashboard. You can check individual students or multiple students at once. 

In this example, Anne and Walter need to practice giving check and removing check:

Then the screen of step 1, View tasks, automatically follows:

You now see which students have been assigned a task. As the students start working on it, you can see exactly how far they have progressed, how many mistakes they have made, and whether they needed hints. By clicking on the Result icon, you get an even more detailed overview per student (more on that later). 

How does the student see that tasks are ready for them?

As soon as Anne or Walter log in to Chessity, they see that something has changed:

A new icon has appeared: the backpack with assignments (this disappears once the tasks are completed). When Anne clicks on this icon, she sees this:

Anne starts with the lesson 'Check in 1 move'. She needs help from the program twice to find the correct solution and earns two stars on this lesson. When she practices again in the River, the stars are also there. After completing the lesson, Anne sees that she has already completed one task. For students, it is very motivating to see how far they have come and what their efforts have yielded.

As a coach, you can also see (in the Tasks module) that Anne has practiced well:

Also read: Targeted practice: assigning tasks and homework

Assign tasks to your students >>

For this, use the Tasks tool.

Note: the Tasks tool is an expert tool mainly used by subject teachers and instructors with chess knowledge, who sometimes want to deviate from the normal learning path. Normally, as a teacher, you don't need to assign tasks yourself, because Chessto does that. He monitors which lesson(s) a child still needs to complete to earn a new sticker on the way to the next exam. Once a week, Chessto distributes these lessons as a 'special mission' (task). Chessto's tasks are personalized and student-specific: the student receives exactly the tasks they need for their progress. (See also: How does Chessto guide students before and after an exam?).

The Tasks tool has a workflow in three steps. When you open the tool, you always see which tasks you have assigned to your students. If you are using the tool for the first time, there are of course no assigned tasks yet. Then you start with step 2: Select tasks.

The first thing you see are all the lesson levels available in Chessity:

By clicking on a level, you open an overview with all the lessons and games of that level. Then you can select the lesson(s) you want the student(s) to practice. Indicate how many times the lesson should be done (between 1 and 5 times):

In this example, only lessons from the Pawn level are chosen, but it is also possible to select lessons from multiple levels.

After selecting the lessons, click on Select students (step 3).

A list of all your students is now displayed. Select the students who should complete the chosen lessons. In the dropdown menu under Groups, you will find all the groups you have created in the dashboard. You can check individual students or multiple students at once. 

In this blog, you can read how to create groups in the dashboard: Easier working with the new dashboard

All-in-1 chess lesson on the digital board

As a digital teaching method for school chess, Chessity is fully suitable for use on the digital board. By connecting your computer to the digital board, you get all lessons, example problems, exercises, and games interactively on the digital school board. This saves a lot of time and works very pleasantly. But as a teacher, you sometimes also want to be able to set up your own positions on the board. For example, to discuss a game, show a nice mate pattern, or to go through difficult tactical exercises with the students.

The digital demo board is one of the Coach functions included with a premium coach account

Then choose this icon:

With the digital demo board you can:

• Quickly load or set up a position: pieces can be placed or removed with a click on the chessboard

• Or use the FEN button to load positions:

• Create impossible positions, like this one:

 stalemate...

or the positions from the chess fairy tale with the three black kings:

 3x mate...

• Place coins or flags on the board to create your own games

• Draw colored arrows or color squares as a visual aid to indicate attacks, threats, plans, or safe squares. This greatly helps in training chess insight.

A few more advantages:

• Nice and large, so even the students at the back of the class can see it well.
• Never lose pieces again, or have to use glue to fix loose magnets
• No more carrying or tidying up

 How do you use the digital demo board?

You use the digital board tool in the same way as you use a physical demo board in the chess lesson. The online demo board is very easy to use so you can get started right away. 

Place or remove pieces

Place pieces by 'picking' them next to the board (click on the piece) and then 'placing' them on the desired spot (click on the square or drag the piece to the square). Remove them by clicking on the piece you want to remove again or by dragging it away. You can also place another piece on it. You place coins or flags in the same way.

Place or remove all pieces

Click on the icon with the empty chessboard to remove all pieces from the board.

Click on the icon with the starting position to set up the starting position.

Color square: click a color and then click on the square you want to mark. Click on the square again to remove the color.

Color area: click a color (button with corners) and then click the border squares of the area you want to mark. Click on the same border squares again to remove the color.

Draw arrow: click an arrow and draw an arrow by moving the mouse over the board with the mouse button pressed. Repeat this action to remove the arrow.

Remove marking: click on the eraser on the left to remove all markings on the board.