Marlene Moore’s fifth grade students at Thomas Hunter Middle School have become chess fans, with an enthusiasm that’s evident from the way they hover over the chessboard and discuss every move.

Last Thursday, they were all gathered in the library, and the conversations were lively.

"If you listen to them talking," said David Holleran, superintendent of Mathews schools, "they’ve got the strategies going on."

A chess player himself since the first or second grade, Holleran has played chess with some of the students since they were in elementary school, and he’s continued that tradition.
For Moore’s class, it all started when her SAIL (Scholastically Able Identified Learners) students learned the game. The gifted students were so enthusiastic that they drew the rest of the class in and everyone wanted to learn. So they drew up lesson plans and pretty soon, "they were all going at it," said Holleran. The teaching stra...