HEALTH AND WELLNESS
CHESS
Overview
Chess curriculum is integrated into Grades K-3 and features a world-class chess team after school.
Dalton’s K-12 Health & Wellness Program is committed to cultivating the student’s authentic self and equipping them with skills to navigate their social landscape mindfully. Specifically, if students are supported to understand their identity and embody reflective practices, they will have reached the first step in acquiring agency around their well-being. With a focus on community, physical, mental, and social health, the program’s goal is to teach concepts and skills for students to assess and maintain their own health. They will learn to employ various decision-making skills and understandings to support and maintain health, and compassionately recognize that every person experiences their own health differently and in many cases, unequally. Ultimately, students will be empowered, by the understanding that their personal health is symbiotically connected to the health of the larger community, to work for the greater health of all.
Overview The two broad purposes of this academic area are to introduce and develop various thinking skills and enhance children’s social development. Thinking skills taught in chess class include categorizing information, pattern recognition, the logical sequencing of ideas, creative interpolations of moves within a sequence, visualizing possible outcomes, defining and solving problems, assessing and responding to danger, discovering short-term tactics, and/or sacrifices to achieve an advantage, and planning and executing long-term strategic goals. In the domain of social development, chess helps children learn to follow the rules, take turns, accept responsibility for their decisions, respect tradition, and show good etiquette in both victory and defeat. The program is responsive and carefully designed to support a range of learning styles and gender differences. Chess is a universal activity, calling on skills valued in every culture and civilization. Simply teaching the history of the game shows its multicultural
TheDaltonSchool – First Program Curriculum Guide – Page 43