You can teach the 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? I think just about everyone, including children. So with that in mind how about teaching them 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 works is that each student is given different times-tables problems.

Each problem is given a certain point amount. For each correctly solved problem that the student has correct, they are assigned the amount of points associated with that problem.  For example, 1×1=1, they would be given 1 point; 2X2=4, and so on. If the student answers the problem incorrectly, they do not gain any points.  As a matter of fact, they lose the amount of points that correspond to the problem they answered incorrectly. This technique gets the children even more interested in learning multiplication tables as well as answering the problems correctly. It will also get them motivated 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 that 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.