Telling time practice

Students will practice telling time skills using an applet developed by Shodor Educational Foundation, Inc. Permission has been granted for the use of the materials as part of the workshop "Interactivate Your Bored Math Students."

A lesson plan for grades 1–3 Mathematics

By Bonnie Boaz

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Related pages

• What time is it?: Students will learn to recognize analog and digital clocks. They will also gain skills to tell time to the hour on both clocks.
• Hands up for telling time: This introductory lesson on telling time will expose children to clocks and how they work. Children will begin to understand how to tell time and how the two separate hands on the clock operate. They will also gain understanding of the concept of time in general.
• "Hang" a time: Students will create their own timelines in a simple "clothesline" format using newspapers as a resource for dates, times and words for related events. Criteria will be simple at first to assure understanding but can be made more complex with subsequent activities.

Related topics

• Learn more about mathematics, measurement, and time.

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Learning outcomes

Students will:

• become familiar with how an analog clock and its corresponding written notation look.
• be able to look at an analog clock and write the time using numbers correctly to the minute.

Teacher planning

Time required for lesson

1-2 hours

Materials/resources

A model of a clock face for each student would be helpful.

Technology resources

Computer with a color monitor with access to the internet for each student.

Pre-activities

• Students should be introduced to the idea of time: morning = when I wake up, noon = when I eat lunch, and night = when I go to bed.
• Next, point out to the students that they have to be in class at a certain time, for example 8:00 am. Now model either on the board or a model clock what the clock face would look like at 8:00 am. Explain minutes and seconds, while being sure to give visual examples of the corresponding clock hands (from Shodor.org).

Activities

1. When students are on the computer, the teacher should to guide them to the online activity Clockwise from Shodor.org.
2. Use verbal directions or demonstrate with an LCD projector how the site works. Review the directions with students clicking on the Help Tab.
• For 1st and 2nd grade students, you may want them to be in the “regular” mode and to use the worksheet provided or one of your own where the time is written and the clock faces are empty. The students then type in a time (ex. 12:30)and look at the analog clock to see how the hands are configured. Then the students can record (draw)the clock hands on the worksheet that has clock faces.
• For 3rd grade and older students you can use the “regular” mode also with harder times to the minute such as 12:54. The student can type in the time and see how the clock is configured and draw the clock face correctly on the provided worksheet.
• 3rd grade students can also use the “random” setting. This setting moves the hands on the analog clock to a very difficult time (to the minute). Then students click on “Push for new time”. This setting moves the hands on the analog clock to a very difficult time (to the minute). A time to the minute will be shown on the analog clock and students have to type in the numerical time in the form: _ _: _ _ in the space provided in the program. Remind students to delete the words- hour and min. in the answer boxes before typing their answers.
3. Students can work on the activity for one or multiply sessions on the computer depending on skill level.

Assessment

• Give an end of unit test appropriate to the grade level of your students. Using the worksheet provided or other test, have students record the numerical time on analog clocks that have the hands drawn in and on other analog clocks have students draw the hands on empty analog clocks that only have the numerical time written below them.
• Student should achieve 70% mastery on this assessment. If they achieve less than 70%, students should go through the activities section of this lesson plan again. Then students with a beginning mastery can go through the activities at a harder level.

Supplemental information

Clock face worksheet: doc | rtf

Comments

This lesson not only allows for several grade levels to use this activity, but it also allows for several abilities within a classroom to work on the same topic and same activity-Telling Time. The teacher needs to individualize the clock face worksheet for the ability of the students and have the applet setting on “Clock Wise” set for regular or random.