On January 18, 2025, the Educational Seminar of Infinite Chess Project, “Chess for children with an autism spectrum. Learn and teach” was organized. Thriving in 23 countries at each continent, the 7th stage of the project welcomes new partner countries – Jamaica, Malawi, Sri Lanka and Ghana. First and foremost, the seminar was organized for teachers from these new partner federations. However, the organizers decided to make it open for everyone to enable all teachers or parents working with children with ASD to benefit from it.
The event was visited by numerous distugueshed guests. Dana Reizniece, Project Supervisor, Deputy Chair of the FIDE Management Board and Anastasia Sorokina, Project Leader and chair of FIDE Commission for Women’s Chess, warmly welcomed the participants. Chair of FIDE Social Commission Andre Vogtlin highlited the core goals and events planned by the team during the year of Social chess.
Hosted by the project coordinator Maria Tamkovich, the seminar brought together 66 teachers, tutors and researchers from 30 countries with practical knowledge in the field. The main goal of the event and the important part of the project implementation process is to discuss the ways of teaching chess to children with autism spectrum , to explain the methodology and to provide the necessary support for teachers.
Ala Mishchanka, co-author of Infinite Chess Handbook, a special needs educational assistant with more than 22 years of experience (Canada), spoke about important preparations for the project start and her practical takeaways from teaching kids with ASD.
Natalia Popova, co-author of Infinite chess Handbook, WIM, FIDE Trainer and the leader of the two-year-long project teaching chess to children with autistic spectrum (FIDE), shared her invaluable experience in working with ASD kids and gave a detailed overview of her unique methodological program, highliting the lessons pecularities during the teaching process.
The Handbook is suitable for groups of students with ASD, mixed groups, inclusive education, individual lessons, and at-home schooling. It is translated into Russian, English, French, Spanish, Chinese and Arabic languages, and we’re proud to share it.
Evgenia Charomova, a speech and language therapist at Parkside Specialist School (New Zealand), talked about autism and other special condition we may face with while working in the project. Evgenia shared her experience, the impact of implementing the pilot Infinite Chess project and numerous heartwarming feedbacks from teachers, students and their parents.
Dr Ankita Shangavi, founder and director of Innocent Times school (India) spoke on the very important and vulnerable topic: Behaviour challenges and parents participation in learning process: expectations & involvement. The valuable expertise of Dr Ankita raised a big interest among the participants and received very positive feedback.
Viesturs Kapče, FIDE Instructor and chess coach (Latvia), shared his working insights on introducing digital tools to teaching process, his achievements and challenges while working with ASD children.
Buddhi Nirukshi, IA, FI and Infinite Chess project partner (UK) presented her in-field feedback on participation in FIDE Infinite chess project: success and failures.
You can find the full video of the seminar on the Edu Seminars page.
Presentations of the speakers are available for your attention.