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Playing Chess Without a Board

How to stop pupils from losing their place

by Bradford Research School
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Mark Miller

Director of Bradford Research School

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Imagine you were asked to play a game of chess without a board or any pieces. When every move has to be made in your head, how many moves before you completely lost your place?

Thankfully, when playing chess, there is a board. This is a concrete item which means that you never have to hold anything in your head, so can concentrate on the next move.

In the classroom, we may often inadvertently ask our pupils to hold multiple elements in their heads for a period of time, such as instructions or multiple parts of a process. Because our working memory capacity is finite, this can lead inevitably to forgetting. They are playing chess without a board, and can lose their place.

Cognitive Offloading

Cognitive offloading is​‘the use of physical action to alter the information processing requirements of a task so as to reduce cognitive demand.’1 You use cognitive offloading as a strategy when you write a shopping list, count on your fingers, or set a reminder in your calendar. This is the function the chess board and pieces play.

In the classroom, a good example of this in action is a number line. This is a concrete representation which allows a physical way of counting. It helps pupils to keep their place because every time they move the counter along the line, they offload that into a physical place. There are many other examples, such as checklists, task plans or printed sets of instruction.

Like any scaffolds, we should consider when to introduce, adjust or remove them:

  • In what circumstances would you use this scaffold?
  • What adjustments could you make to the scaffold? For individual pupils? For the same pupil as they develop proficiency?
  • When would you choose to remove this scaffold? How would you know it is the right time to remove it?
  • In what ways could this scaffold be potentially harmful?

Worked examples

Worked examples provide students with step-by-step, or part-by-part, demonstration of a task that makes clear the required product (that is, answers or output) and the process of completing the task.’2 Completed worked examples can serve as useful prompts to help pupils stay on track, particularly for science and mathematics.

When we move from teacher modelling towards independent practice, we have to manage this effectively in order to avoid cognitive overload, pupils losing their place, and making mis-steps. Bob Pritchard writes in this EEF blog:

Research suggests it may be better to fade backwards; take a completed worked example and remove some of the later stages for the pupils to complete independently. The aim is to fade at an appropriate pace so that the leap from worked example to independent practice isn’t too great.

Again, we need to consider the point where too much scaffolding becomes counter-productive.

Teach Place-keeping strategies


Despite our best efforts, pupils will lose their place. So we should help them to a) develop their own approaches to avoiding this happening, and b) use strategies to cope when it does happen.

Note-taking can relieve the working memory demands of a task. It could be as simple as writing down the instructions that the teacher has just given on a mini whiteboard. Knowing where to seek help, whether through resources or people, can also be beneficial. We can also teach memory-supporting strategies such as designing a mnemonic.

For pupils who particularly struggle with working memory demands, these strategies will draw further on working memory capacity, so should be explicitly taught.

For more on Working Memory, read our guide: Working Memory: Research Into Practice

1Risko, E. F., & Gilbert, S. J. (2016). Cognitive Offloading. Trends in cognitive sciences, 20(9), 676688.
2EEF Cognitive Science approaches in the classroom – a review of the evidence

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