You can teach students a fun activity incorporating multiplication times-tables with this inquisitive game that includes the concept of a point system. Who doesn’t love a little competition? Just about everyone, including children. With that in mind, how about teaching your students a little about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation as well?

Did you know that most people in general tend to do better with any activity when they are competing against someone else? One great way to accomplish this is to incorporate a technique through a fun and stimulating school activity. The way that this game begins is each student being given different times table problems.

Each problem has a point amount. For each correctly solved problem that the student has correct, he is assigned the amount of points associated with that problem. For example, 1×1=1, the student would be given 1 point; 2×2=4, and so on. If the problem is answered incorrectly, no points are gained. As a matter of fact, the student loses the amount of points that correspond to the problem they answered incorrectly. This technique makes the children even more interested in learning multiplication tables as well as answering the problems correctly. It will also motivate them to correctly answer the equations, especially those with the higher numbers so they can accumulate more points.

At the end of the assignment, each student’s score is added up and the person with the most correct problems, as well as the most points is designated as the winner. If there is more then one winner, then you can do a sudden death match and have each player compete against each other until there is a winner. Or, you can reward both of them with the title of “Multiplication Masters” and they can be the designated team leaders when you play this game another time.

You can also add even more fun to this game by breaking the class up into teams and assigning 5 players to each team. This allows the students a chance to interact with each other and learn the value of teamwork. Plus, for those students who are struggling, they will be able to work with other students that can help them out.

By incorporating this fun game into your teaching plan, learning multiplication tables will be a lot more fun for kids, plus they will benefit from working with other students. They will also learn a valuable lesson that integrates the concepts of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.