Knockathon happens in a story whenever an actor approaches a building to knock on the door, which happens more often than you might think:
A girl wanted a boyfriend so she left her house and went to the house next door, where a boy her age lived. She knocked on the door.
Instructor says: “Class, the girl knocked on the door!“
A student calls out: “Combien de fois/How many times?“
This is the voice of the “Combien de Fois?”(CF) person. It is actually a job a student has in my classroom, but is not one of the seventeen presented in this book because it is not used very often (but should be!). Whenever a person knocks on a door, just before the knuckles go to the door, they ask:
“How many times?” (did the person knock on the door?).
The instructor says some number, and then the CF person knocks (on their table) while trying to synchronize their knocks with the knocking motions of the actor on the door. They have to knock as many times as you specified in response to the CF person’s question. If the sound is not in sync with the knocking motion, the CF person may get fired.
So, just to be really clear – in the story, when the instructor says that the actor knocked on the door, the actor puts their hand up to knock on the door, and the CF person asks immediately, “How many times?”
The instructor says something like seventeen times, then the two kids try to synchronize the sound with the action.This gives repetitions on numbers and adds a little fun to the storytelling process.