As we wind up the year I like to focus on skills that our third grade teachers have specified as essential when heading into third grade. One of those skills is repeated addition and working with arrays to learn to multiply. If you don'k know what an array is click here. I'm not a very into worksheets because they really aren't very engaging, so I told my kids that if they worked really hard and learned to use arrays I would make a Knockout game for this particular skill. Knockout is a fun engaging game that I use for a lot of skills, and they're obsessed with it! Here is how it works. First they pick teams (yes I let them pick because they are usually really nice about how they choose). They sit in sort of an L shape around each side of our big carpet facing the SMART board with their iPads and a whiteboard app (if you don't have iPads regular whiteboards and markers will work). I project this Google slide show I made called Array Knockout onto the SMART board and they get ready to play.

The first two people in line race to see who can complete the array on their side of the board first. The slides look like this.

They have to write at least one repeated addition equation and at least one multiplication equation for the array on their side. I watch to see who gets the correct answer first then they run up and hit the SMART board hoping to "knockout" their opponent!

Even though the two students at the front of the line are "it" everyone that is still in the game works to solve the problem because if both people who are "it" get it wrong someone can steal and they're both out. Sometimes the next slide looks like this, and if that happens the person who lost has to go to the middle of the carpet, and they're out!

However everyone on the carpet still tries to solve the problem because sometimes the next slide looks like this.

If that happens the first person I see with the right answer gets to rejoin the game!

This slide also pops up sometimes just for fun!

We keep playing until someone wins the whole thing, and they get a big prize, usually a chapter book, so everyone try their best to win. It's also super fast paced and really engaging. Almost all of my kids can do arrays quickly now because of this game! The third grade teachers love that. The game is all yours, just follow the link to the Array Knockout Google slide show above. Have fun knocking out those arrays!