 This webinar is recorded and the recording will be used for dissemination material. So, with no further ado, I would like to, on behalf of the Commissioner Marie Gabrielle, thank you for all your presence here. And this webinar is organized by the Commissioner and she's here with us. So, thank you so much for taking your time to join us today. So, Marie Gabrielle, European Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture and Education and Youth, the floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, first of all, I would like to say a big thank you to Judith and Anto and Eta. Thank you very much for being with us. You are role models for us and I'm sure that today's discussion will inspire many, many, many other people. When I see in our chat, it's amazing to see what's happened. I would like to say a big thank you to my team for organizing this meeting. Again, as I already said, it's such a pleasure to be here with you all. I organized this webinar as I do believe that chess can play a key role in the development of critical and strategic thinking of young people because chess is such a fascinating sport. You assess the board, draw logical conclusions, plan ahead, anticipate the future and most importantly, you make your move. I cannot think of a better checklist for success in life, especially given the challenges we as a society are facing. Given the challenges that our young people will have to deal with, digitalization, climate change, COVID-19, I think we can agree the state of the board in front of us is quite tough. So strategic thinking is paramount for success and chess is a great way to get young people to think strategically, to be creative given the constraints to which we are subjected because reality could be not always be easy but we still make our move and indeed bringing chess to classrooms in itself was an important move made by people like Judith Polgar. I doubt she was thinking specifically about the pandemic when she decided to dedicate herself to these schools but the strategic value of that decision remains all the same. As schools had to close, we saw even better how valuable game-based pedagogies really were. If school can only be accessed through a screen and you cannot play outside, games can really help you focus. Judith or people like Antonietta Stefanova, you are an inspiration for us, for our young people, and I would like to express again all my gratitude. Well, in life we cannot always predict every move thrown at us but we can try to set up to set up the board in a way where the possible moves are stuck in our favor and this is precisely what we try to do at policy level. We cannot predict every classroom scenario. Learning is hard to predict. Each student has their own questions. Each teacher explains the matter their own way but we can still set them up for success at policy level. We can create opportunities for learning in environments that bring people together. We can promote exploration and risk assessment using creativity and independent thinking and this is at the core of the European education area. The analogy of setting up the play, moving pieces to our advantage in chess, works so well because we aim precisely to put students and teachers in a position where they can generate the most value, the most learning, the most success and we are working on making sure everyone develops key competencies that's set in our recommendation on this issue. This means basic skills but also social and emotional skills, responsibility, cooperation, problem solving or critical thinking and we'll also make sure that young learners stay in school through our pathways to school success initiative. After all fighting early school living is a bit like making sure we keep our pieces on the board not taken by the opponent and we create spaces where you can come together, learn together and play together too like each winning. I saw again in our chat that we have a lot of each representative of the each winning community and I must say that yes for me too, each winning is an amazing tool. It marches digital tools to foster the most important aspect of school life, learning together and I'm really very glad that more than 74 projects have dealt with chess and this webinar further underscores our commitment to using chess as a powerful learning instrument. In fact the each winning community has been central in connecting learning, critical thinking and making our move contributing to our communities and the connections here with the new european Bauhaus this year really showcase this commitment to making critical thinking and action. With your contribution we are about to make our future more beautiful and sustainable together and indeed I cannot think of something more emblematic of setting up a winning board than teachers and students reflecting on how to improve their school making it greener more digital and learning the lessons from COVID-19. So dear friends let me welcome you to this webinar. I hope my admiration for your work has come true because you are definitely an inspiration and chess bringing you all together certainly is an important component of this admiration. Who doesn't love an intellectually challenging activity where you learn together, make friends and are a part of a community that sets you up for success. Indeed I could just as easily be talking about chess it's about school. So thank you all for your commitment for making so many right moves bringing chess to school and I hope in addition to everything else that today's webinar is also a token of recognition of your work. So I wish you all the success but now a wonderful webinar. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you once more Commissioner Maria Gabriel and now is the time to actually give the floor to our guests our honorable guests already mentioned by Commissioner Maria Gabriel Judith Polgar and Antoinette Stefanova and we will start with Judith Polgar and actually I will stop presenting my slides so she can start sharing her screen with us and meanwhile I'll just introduce Judith Polgar. Judith Polgar is probably most of you know she's an Hungarian chess grandmaster and Olympic champion and one of the most successful female chess players ever Judith. Thank you so much for accepting invitation to be with us today. The floor is yours. Thank you very much for the kind words from the commissioner and I would like to welcome everybody who is right here with us at the webinar of chess in education. I think it is something wonderful and I'm very much appreciated to be here with you that all of you either already involved with chess in education or maybe thinking about or on the edge. So I'm Judith Polgar. I was competing for more than three decades myself. I was mainly playing against male competitors. I wanted to be the best but I reached the top 10 and I was for a few decades 26 years number one between the ladies. I retired in 2014 from competitive chess and since then I'm focusing promoting chess and with my foundation we focus a lot specifically on education how to implement chess in it. So in the next 10 minutes you're going to be hearing some of my thoughts and I try to put together in this very short presentation why chess is beneficial for kids and it may become indispensable in the future education I believe. So let's start chess for every kid. I do believe that there are many forms of having chess in the classroom but there are different ways. So first of all I want to talk just a little bit about learning chess itself. It's a game. You can teach a kid at home, grandparents, chess teachers or in the classroom but then we're talking about using chess as a game and this is something develops a lot. I'm going to be talking about a little bit but there is another way of using it integrated into school subjects which is completely different way of thinking and I think most of you are teachers right here and I can tell you that there are tons of different ways how you can use it in your own subject implementing chess using chess for motivation. So let's go first chess is a game. I started to play chess when I was five and let's talk a little bit about what it develops with kids and what can it give to kids. Pattern recognition is one of the most commonly said things about chess and it is true because that's what I did also that patterns are extremely important in a child's life. Logical thinking it is also something pushing and very important for kids. Problem solving is something that you do non-stop in a chess game and I do believe that all of us know how important it is especially in these difficult days to solve problems and decision making is also something that you continuously do in a chess game. Critical thinking is also something very important not only in the chess board to be able to improve yourself but it's also something extremely important in modern age to be a critical thinker. This is something underestimated I think nowadays and analytical skills is also something you can learn quite a bit through by playing chess because you always have to analyze your mistakes or your moves how to improve yourself in the next opportunity. Strategy is absolutely essential in life whether you have a short-term strategy or a long-term but for example for sustainability in the world it is definitely move number one I believe that you do have to make a good strategy so you have to be moving on in your head really making your steps ahead. Combination skill I find also very important in my chess it was very known that I was making all kinds of combinations combining different ideas different movements whether it's a chess board or your everyday activity you do have to manage many things at the same time so how to combine things the way that it actually works. Fair play I also find something extremely essential for kids because in a chess game especially if you're competing then it means that you have to learn what fair play is you have to acknowledge if you win you lose or your opponent is just better and move on to the next game but there are tons of different ways how you can learn and practice in a chess tournament for a kid. Calculation is also essential in every part of our life this is obviously I practice the lot in chess and discovery I think something in chess you can do to discover a new idea discover something that you didn't know yet and it is also very important for the happiness of children. Self-control it is I must say I have two children myself but they grown up already more or less they are 15 and 17 but still I believe that self-control is something all the kids have to learn. Visual thinking of course I can play blindfolded for example but many of the kids can learn many different things through chess with visual thinking and I always like to highlight also how extremely well the game of chess supports gross mindset actually we also have some activities in Hungary at the Global Chess Festival where we show that chess is really an exceptionally good game to show for kids how the gross mindset works and now I want to share with you just a little a thought idea how a father shared on a Facebook account the question was by his friend why do you invest so much money and time so that your son can learn chess and play chess and his reply was this I pay so my son can learn discipline cultivate his mind develop his creativity to achieve his goals work hard success doesn't happen overnight responsibility patience ability to concentrate skills that will be useful in his life and it's a university of life and later on you can look back if you're interested to read the whole part but I believe there are really a lot of parents who already know how useful it is for their kids but now let's go to the other side when chess is going into the classroom it does have a place there trust me we have our own program of my methodology and we have four elementary school students the chess palace and I just want to highlight some of the few things which we do uh uh experience while teaching and using it so what is very important also that if you go into your classroom the social emotional skills can be also extremely well developed through chess kids also take responsibility much better so you have to see that chess can be used in very different ways in different subjects and it can be a great connection to develop their personality as well so responsibility collaboration there are a lot of ways you can connect chess to collaborate in the classroom cognitive development is extremely important verbal skills we also experience that the kids are getting better arithmetic obviously with the coordinates on the chess board but also we use a lot the pieces value for mathematical equations analytical skills I mentioned also with the chess the game of chess and I have to tell you that there are quite a bit of things which is which is developed through in the classroom using chess as a tool by the teacher or if somebody teaching chess confidence is also something I can even say maybe the most important that the kids do have self-confidence this is extremely important to be able to learn to assess yourself to evaluate yourself to make everything what you do creativity is something that we all do but we have to practice it as well imagination is very important memory we do a lot of different games in memory because what we use with chess pieces for example kids can be very happy they uh they give a positive feedback they experience positivity and they can learn better other things as well faster learning it is something also I've experienced it with many people who are using chess in the classroom that many of them using chess and the kids start to learn faster for example mathematical subject things motivation it is something essential for kids that's the only way that kids can really learn and study new things if you keep motivate them and of course it's a great challenge for teachers out there gamification is something that I do feel very important the game of chess is already a great game but I think with chess with the 64 squares with the six different kind of characters and many different ideas can be developed making gamification elements to use for educating kids and teaching them everyday skill things and experience based learning this is also something very important I grew up I was homeschooled myself and most of my life I learned things not in theory but immediately by experience and doing things and this is something I think it's essentially nowadays education that kids should be experiencing continuously things so by doing they are learning very fast just final uh a slide that I want to share with you that we also make some research control groups in our educational program in the chess palace and Eva Diarmatia senior researcher was helping us to do so so we had some of the chess palace and some of the classes who did not use the chess palace and the findings were that the strongest effect is in the field of intellectual abilities reasoning is also something very important and through chess you can improve a lot for kids having that better performance in verbal skills in arithmetic children with special educational needs it's also very important and I want to highlight that that it can be very very well used for those kids so thank you very much I would like to wish you that you get inspired to use chess in your subject or in some way or another and anyway I would like to thank you for all the teachers who are here and all the teachers generally who dedicate their life to this profession because you are one of the most important in the world because the next generation is raised by you thank you very much well thank you Judith for the inspiring speech and uh there's uh Judith also founded the Judith Polka Foundation so there's a lot of materials there a lot of resources there and we will happily share those resources as well with all of you we along with the recording of this session well um there's already some questions on the chat but we will take all of the questions while we go into the interactive discussion now actually we do have our our second guest Antoinette Stefanova and I'll just kindly ask you for a few seconds so I can actually upload the slides again yes they're coming in okay wonderful and Antoinette thank you also for accepting this invitation Antoinette Stefanova is a Bulgarian chess grandmaster and women's women's world champion sorry from 2004 2006 and Antoinette thank you so much again for joining us and the floor is yours you can take control of the slides thank you so much and okay I take control yes perfect so first of all thank you everybody and they are European commissioner Maria Gabriel director general Temis Christofido dear Judith dear teachers I'm really honored to be here taking part in this webinar and to share my experience in chess and maybe it can help you make up your mind if you want to really use it as an educational tool and I would say a life tool really because it develops all the qualities we need in in our life so my story in and chess journey started in the in a rather standard way at that time there was no chess in school so my father had to introduce chess to me and my older sister and he did that when I was about four years old and my sister was about seven and how how he did it was not so standard at that time because he started telling us fairy tales fairy tales using the chess pieces so we had the two kingdoms and a princess and a prince and we had some ballroom dancing with the pieces and there was some marriages at the end happy end of course and there was a lot of fairy tales about all the chess pieces so the knights bishops rooks all day they had their fair share of adventures but my favorite story was the story of the pawn starting out as the most unnoticeable soldier if it managed to get through all the obstacles on the road and reach the final rank the magic happens the pawn can turn into a knight a bishop a rook or even a queen that really captured my imagination as a four-year-old and later in life I became I realized how important is that story for each one of us that inspired me to be more interested in chess and after a few months of playing different games with the chess board and chess pieces my father introduced the real chess rules they are very simple and very strict and in the same time gives unlimited possibilities and that's that really kept my attention and I was eager to learn more and more as the chess pieces were already my friends I just wanted to know all new ways and to just play with them so quickly we started training for a few hours per day and by the age of five or six I started participating in my first official tournaments at that time also my family started falling apart my parents were divorcing so from calm intelligent and loving people they turned into some kind of tireless enemies who were fighting all the time and for everything of course in such circumstances normally the impact goes to the children so for my sister she became a fierce rebellion and I was becoming just a very shy and withdrawn and quiet kid I loved reading books I started reading very young by the age of five already I was buying my own books in the library probably not the most suitable for my age but this was one of my passions and the other was chess in chess I felt safe and I could use my creativity also the clear chess rules that doesn't allow any cheating and a very little if any lack factor gave me the security that if you do your strategies well if you play better than your opponent then you will most probably win the game so I was training for a few hours per day with my father and I quickly excelled at chess from the first tournaments I showed good results against men and women and by the age of seven I became the champion of Sofia amongst women at 10 I became the world champion for girls under 10 with 11 wins out of 11 games but at the same time I was going to the local school so always I was combining chess and the traditional way of education and of course by traveling to tournaments I was missing a lot of a lot of classes but I had excellent marks how was that possible I was not a genius not at all but I believe that chess has helped has helped me a lot because I have developed the ability to quickly absorb memorize analyze and apply the new information which is very critical in performing well in the education as Judith have said there's so many things to be learned by chess for school for for the education in general but also in life I can say that chess has helped me enormously in my life to grow up from this very shy child into somebody who have reached some of his goals and well the strategic thinking is a part of every chess player's life and it has immense influence over our way of thinking planning choosing the right moments always evaluating the circumstances and trying to make the right move but also it has chess teaches us to accept defeat because all of us we go through that and not only in chess and in life and how you react after being defeated is really the most important thing for me and to be able to raise again to rise again and to achieve what you want to achieve so I have overcome a difficult childhood somewhat troubled teenage years as most of the people I was wondering if I should go continue with chess or go more seriously in education I have decided to combine both I was also lucky that I managed to do it with a reasonable success I have managed to become a European champion three times also for for girls but also for ladies and three times were champion as I mentioned under 10 and also in the ladies and in rapid chess it as well as in the classical but in the same time I have managed to go through my university I have a diploma in management of human resources a master degree in finance and the love of knowledge and the the hunger for knowledge have driven me to continue learning throughout my life so I'm doing now my second master degree in strategic leadership I have gone to politics where is even more complex all the strategical and critical things in thinking are really of great importance I have been a member of the Bulgarian parliament in two parliaments so I believe that most of what I have achieved is thanks to chess and thanks to the qualities and discipline that chess gives to us and I really hope that teachers would embrace this initiative to teach chess in the preschool and school age because chess really teaches us not what to think but how to think and I believe that this is the most important thing today thank thank you very much and I wish you all a pleasant discussion after that thank you Antonietta very very emotional and inspiring speech as well thank you so much well I hope that these two first keynote speeches were enough to spark or some curiosity and some questions in your minds because actually now we are going into our interactive discussion and for our interactive discussion we will still count on our honorable guests and we will add to the conversation three training teachers that we have invited these teachers are Anna from Poland from the twinning project chess the game of the kings that includes countries the countries France Greece Italy Poland Romania Spain and Turkey and the main goal of this project is to bring together the pupils from different countries to promote key competencies through the game of chess and we've talked about some key competencies already and the other two colleagues is David so joining Anna we have David Gandara and Dimitris from sorry Dimitris from Greece and David from Spain from the twinning project learning chess together that includes Croatia Czech Republic France Greece Italy Poland and Spain and the project goal is the creation of a chess guide for beginners and the students have to create text audio video and pictures about how the different pieces move and some basic rules and the creation of these resources will connect the project in a diverse with diverse school subjects and actually I already saw a question about the usage of chess to teach languages so I will actually now stop presenting my slides so we can all see our guests that are here today and now highlighted which is wonderful and actually I would like to first start with David thank you David for accepting the invitation and also Anna and Dimitris and David based on your experience developing this twinning project what is the importance of strategic thinking in the learning processes we already heard the experience from Antoinetta from Judith in your view what would be the importance of strategic thinking in the learning process yes well hello everyone the two white masters already talked about this so I would like to add just what I think specifically for for classrooms I'm the school counselor in my school so I don't teach traditional subjects so what I did is to introduce a new subject a chess subject to take advantage of this strategic thinking especially the the analysis because in chess you have to take into account a lot of different aspects of opposition and combine them well great master polgar already talked about this but this is very important for me because today kids have a lot of problems with attention and with working memory so if you practice analyzing these different parts of the board at the same time you develop both things because if you don't pay attention that's impossible to do and you have to memorize visually which is great because when you develop the visual part of working memory you improve the the kind of data that you can store it's demonstrated that if you memorize only text you have a very limited account but if you use if you use visuals it's much much bigger and and also I think it's very important for them to be able once you analyze everything to be able to evaluate to to talk about probabilities of if it's better for for white disposition or black and you can make decisions after this process of analyzing the different aspects of of the thing and finally I would like to add that this is especially important for diversity we have lots of different learning difficulties and they already talked about this but we are talking about attention and one last thing is that for for students with ASD or APHD chess can be a source of giving them something to do that they can do well because if you only ask them traditional school activities they usually do a lot of things that are not right but in chess they have another opportunity and that's what how I see strategic thinking in education as a big value wonderful thank you so much David for sharing your your thoughts and would you like to add or comment to David's reply yes I believe that what David said is absolutely correct and the strategic thinking as I said also before is a crucial way of thinking not only in education but in life basically and analyzing evaluating planning but also being flexible with your plan because in chess there is constant re-evaluation after every move the position changes and that's that's why it is so much like in life because circumstances are changing all the time so keeping this flexibility and keep re-evaluating and then you can always change your plan adjust your plan and just do it in the best possible way so I believe it's essential excellent and that actually ties ties up nicely with the next question that I have for Dimitris and the question that I have for Dimitris is how can initiatives like chess could help develop student agency meaning the capacity to set a goal to reflect and add responsibly to effect change based on your experience also of the training project how do you see this happening with through chess thank you Ruth firstly I'd like to thank you for the invitation the distinguished panels all guests and of course teachers from all Europe so as for students agency one of the best learning practices is gamification as we already have told games are the best way for students to learn so chess is also a game through chess students learn to assess the situation plan set goals and develop a method to approach and decide future they also learn to anticipate the reaction of the environment which is now the case is the opponent children learn to check what works and what does not work to accept their weaknesses to modify targets to evolve and become their best their their best version so as a result students get used to such a way of thinking and acting their brain becomes familiar with this pattern and it is much easier for them to implement such thinking in real life I think it is much easier for students who play chess to answer questions like what do I have to do how and why what went wrong how I'm going to improve it and what should be changed finally I think it is very important to mention that chess also influences students emotional diligence since students understand that any behavioral action creates a behavioral reaction so they learn to affect change to modify personal behaviors towards desired responses from others so I have to admit that school life becomes much more attractive promising and playful for children with having chess in their daily life thank you very much for this intention and it's very interesting indeed to include chess into educational process well thank you for sharing your experience as well Dimitris and I would like actually to invite Judith to comment also on your reply you're muted Judith yes it's nice to hear so many inputs from from everyone and yeah I believe that through chess kids do learn kind of a way of thinking systematically in many ways and also it is something that they can improve they can see the immediate reaction what happens on the chess board for example so they can take the consequences of that and as it was mentioned with Dimitris exactly they can put up the right questions and chess game is just a tool for them to get the maximum potentials for themselves and I think it's also very important for kids to understand that through chess it's a game it's a fighting game it can be very seriously a thing but they're so rich that they can learn such a depth in different situations that they can apply in different subjects and chess can also stimulate kids to think because I think to think nowadays it is somehow not necessarily the most fashionable thing and not necessarily everybody wants to inspire and motivate kids to think and it is very important not to lose this ability for them and continuously make them curious and I think if somebody starts playing chess game and small games within chess they can continuously get into the flow which is so important and then they're just going to be learning and improving their personality from day to day. Yeah that's very very important thank you so much Judith for adding those thoughts and actually last but not least Anna also thank you for joining us. Anna what do you think it is the impact of allowing students a space and an opportunity to create their own learning process their own learning path sorry. Hello everyone. Students start their adventure with chess with simple rules learning simple rules after that they can improve their own skills but it's demand their involvement their own work if they don't involve themselves in the process of self-education then one develop their skills it shows them how their own development depends on their decision and action of course it is very difficult but they have because they have to lose many times it isn't nice for them sometimes they won't do it but as times goes by students accept failures and they see them as a part of the way they are going it's very important lesson and after the chess game has started the young man and boys and girls are left alone they have to they have to make their own decision because they has no one to ask for advice they have to make a decision and take their responsibilities for for this decision it isn't it isn't easier chess game creates problematic situation and they give their opportunities to learn students have to I'm sorry they want to be successful and they know that the failures isn't a problem during the playing the chess it's a step to success so they learn other things for example they don't have to postpone tasks because it isn't a good idea that if they hesitate they can lose they don't get what they want they have to avoid distractions and concentrate it helps with the learning in there is in each subject when they learn at school especially now when they have many distractors for example internet etc they they have to give priority particular tasks so it's very very important because they have to develop their skills what what is the main problem of of the learning so I think that is all thank you so much Anna thank you thank you so much Anna there's a question in the audience about the name of your project so Anna the project is chess the game of the kings and the project from Dimitris and David is learning chess together well this has been a wonderful discussion and I firmly believe that we would actually stay here the whole afternoon talking with very very interesting topics but we actually need to move on to our closing and before doing that I would like to ask Judith and Antoinette if they would like to actually give us some final words one minute 30 seconds each maybe Judith first and then Antoinette yes thank you I think it was very important by Anna mentioning failure that this is the road to success and just a little thought that time management is also something that kids can learn a lot through chess I just want to say thank you very much for having me here and to be able to share my experience my views and hope everybody gets a little bit inspired and go on the path to use chess even more or someone who also only going to be starting to have chess in the classroom but I think I can bravely say so that the person who is a real teacher cares about kids how they improve they will not regret using chess perfect thank you so much Antoinette yes I would also like to say thank you for being part of this webinar and I would like to address the teachers really I hope that you will include chess because chess does develop the potential and I'm sure this is what you want for your students to be able to reach their full potential and chess is the best way for it so good luck with the chess adventure and hopefully see you again thank you so much Antoinette well and now I give the floor to Temis Christofidou director general for education youth sport and culture from the European Commission Temis thank you for joining us for doing this closing I thank you and I want to first say thank you to you didn't Antoinette for having been here with us it's not for you to thank us it's for us to thank you for sharing with us your amazing life stories it's so fascinating to listen to you I also want to thank the teachers that were with us and I want to thank the teachers also for everything they do and for who they are if I ever have grandchildren I have one adult daughter so if I ever have grandchildren I will do my best to get them to love chess that's that's what I come out of from this meeting today dear friends thank you for participating in this webinar your contributions through e-twinning and indeed all your efforts to bring chess to the classroom really show how vibrant e-twinning communities your efforts continue to break new ground developing and implementing innovative ways of teaching and learning as Commissioner Maria Gabrielle said chess helps us develop the right attitude for life this is an evergreen game played for centuries but still capable of capturing our imaginations the fact that any of us can have agency changing the outcome of the game by thinking strategically and being persistent encourages precisely the kind of attitude we need this is how we tackle our current challenges and to do this while developing anticipatory thinking while using technology and while being exposed to different ways of thinking across borders this is really great indeed in an increasingly interconnected world there is more and more a moral imperative to make use of these tools to listen to each other and learn from each other we do it at policy level two here in the european commission connecting the member states in peer learning activities the work of the e-twinning community is fundamental also in this respect we are proud of supporting you and helping you build so many bridges across the european union there are more than one million users and this number keeps growing this critical mass is essential and i think today is a fantastic example of why i cannot think of a more emblematic example of bringing our passion to the classroom than bringing chess to help our children learn this could have never happened bandated top down it has to spring from the passions of those teaching and learning and the benefits are evident as we saw today first chess can help us learn faster developing the skills we need to succeed in daily life and sometimes even more immediately in subjects like maths and science second chess is an exceptional motivating tool helping kids to stay curious focused and interested in learning you spoke of failure you spoke of time management there are a lot of things that i've i kept noting in which i will i will keep as precious takeaways from this today and thirdly the e-twinning platform provides an excellent opportunity for students and teachers from different countries to communicate and collaborate learning together also through games like chess like maths chess is a universal language people from all walks of life and from different cultures could use the chess language to speak to each other to understand each other to learn from each other chess most certainly brings them all together most importantly chess is not just strategic thinking or maths we saw how its complexity leads us to other disciplines to the arts social science human psychology and even languages so this cross-disciplinary aspect is so important difficult abstract ideas come to life precisely when we connect them to everyday experience so dear friends for this contribution i would like to wholeheartedly thank the two chess grandmasters that were with us today Judith polga and antoaneta stefanova as well as the teachers and all the e-twinning community you're a true inspiration for us all and i thank you thank you thank you also feminist christofito for joining us today and i'm afraid we've reached the end of our webinar thank you for your participation please don't forget to complete the feedback survey we have shared in the chat and also please notice that no certificate will be issued after the webinar nonetheless we will indeed share with you the recording of this session so if you want to revisit some of the thoughts and also we will share all materials shared during the session today in the page of the webinar as well some more information about Judith polgar foundation and the resources that they have available so once more thank you so much for joining us for all our honorable guests for joining us today including the twinning teachers thank you so much for joining us and i wish you all a lovely evening