When the minute hand passes 30 minutes and approaches a full hour, the hour hand gets closer to the next hour. This can be problematic for students. Many see the hour hand close to the next hour and think that is the hour. This post presents an approach to address this with students.
At vs Almost 10:00
Here is an entry point for telling time in the 2nd half hour, when the hour hand appears to closer to the next hour. The clocks below contrast what 10 and a time getting closer to 10. This allows a focus on the minute hand. We can contrast the minute hand showing 10:00 vs getting close to 10:00. This is the first chunk in a sequence of mini-lessons.
The Judy clock is dynamic and allows us to move the minute hand closer and closer to the next hour, 10:00. We can have the student “see” time getting closer to the next hour but not being the next hour yet.
Practice with Time in 2nd Half Hour
Math-aids.com website provides choices for the times situations you want to create for a handout. In the image below, the clocks all have time in the 2nd half hour (with 5 minute increments). This can be used as follow up practice to the instruction shown above. Have the student do the following:
Identify what hour it is almost, e.g., “almost 10:00”
Identify the actual hour, e.g., “it is still 9:00.”
Per request, I created a short video showing how I create customized number lines on WORD. This post also includes a link to a WORD document with 3 customized number lines: time, money with negatives, and miles.
Elapsed time
The image below is from a post on elapsed time. I wanted to create different time scales to match clocks I could create on math-aids.com.
The Video
In the video I show how I created the time number line. In the top image below, you can see the table highlighted. I then show how I copy and paste the number line and then edit to create units with money, with negatives.
Here is a screenshot of the video. You can see the number line in an early stage of development. Below the image is a link the video.
Below is an image of the three customized number lines. Here is a link to the handout, which is in WORD format to allow you to revise to suit your work with students.
If you find this helpful, please consider making a small donation to a fund to build an accessible playground at a camp site for individuals with disabilities.
Telling time is challenging for many students. This is likely a function of the abstract nature of time is. You cannot see or touch it. You experience observe it through a clock. Elapsed time is more abstract and challenging. An entry point to elapsed time may be student experience with walking from one point to another. This post details the a Google Jamboard that leverages this prior knowledge to present elapsed time.
The images below are from a handout to introduce elapsed time. This a revised version of another handout I created. The sequence in chunked to incrementally present additional elements. A number line is used to model, first on Jamboard then on a handout, then clocks are introduced. The first problem has an exact hour on the second clock to make it more simple but to still include minutes.
The clocks were created on math-aids.com, which has a page to allow you to choose times to be represented on clocks. They create clocks with color coded hands, which I follow with highlighters on the handouts and Jamboard.
First, the identify the the upcoming whole hour and marks the hands with highlighters or colored pens or pencils.
Determine the number of minutes to the hour.
Identify the whole hour preceding the second time and marks accordingly.
Determine the number of minutes from the whole hour to the second time.
Use the green marks used to identify the whole hours and determine how many hours passed.
I did not create a spot to write the answer to cut back on visuals.
The first page provides an introduction to the use of the number line without having to process the clocks.
Mark the whole hours.
Determine the number of minutes preceding and following the whole hours.
Determine the number of hours that passed.
A Jamboard is used to model the first 4 problems to engage the students kinesthetically and to unpack the concept. The students can do a Jamboard slide then work on the matching problem on the handout. (See photo at bottom for access.)
On the handout, I addressed the minutes of both clocks before determining hours. The Jamboard person can be used to flesh out the concept of time passing as the person walks. As a result, I suggest determining the hours before the minutes on the second clock as the person walks the entire way. When you return to the handout, you can reference the person walking the last 10 minutes and even show the students the Jamboard again when you do those minutes before determining hours.
Telling time on an analog clock is challenging for many students, especially some with special needs. I worked with a middle school student with a disability one summer and after a few lessons he scored 100% over two days on telling time. Below shows the progression I used with him. I used a task analysis approach of breaking the task into smaller steps and chunking the steps to introduce an additional task demand incrementally.
I use math-aids.com worksheets for time and for many topics because it provides dynamic worksheets in which users can choose features. This helps to enable implementation of a task analysis and chunking approach.
The first chunk is whole hour time, which is an option on math-aids. The clocks produced by have color coded hands, with green for hours and red for minutes. I use use additional color coding through highlighters because the handouts are likely printed in B&W and because it engages students kinesthetically.
The second chunk is time with minutes under 5 minutes. Math-aids allows a user to choose specific times and will create clocks with those times. To provide a visual aid, students can write out the numbers on the handout or they can be printed or handwritten on the master copy. You can snip out the clocks shown, paste into a WORD document and then add the numbers. Note: I do not jump to half hours and quarter hours until last. I want students to focus on hours and minutes. This is analogous to counting money. I don’t introduce cents after talking about half a dollar.
The next chunk is time with minutes between 6 and 10 minutes. This is how I introduce the 5 minute mark and have them count on from 5 (see the 5 in the middle bottom). This leads to all the tic marks for 5s.
The 5s are the entry point to navigating the entire clock. I introduce the tic marks for 5s without the numbers for the hours. Students can be prompted to draw in red minute hands for a given numbers of minutes in 5s. If you want to make a handout for this, save the image below and crop.
The students are then given the minute hands and are prompted to identify the minutes as a multiple of 5s (you don’t say “multiples” but can say “in 5s”). An option is to have them highlight the minute hands at first then fade the highlighting. They do this first with no numbers for hours then with numbers for hours – an option on math-aids.
Then students are asked to tell time by identifying the fives and then counting on (as they did with time with minutes under 10). Here are some options.
You can have them highlight.
They can focus on just the 5s and write the multiple of 5 preceding the minute hand.
They can count on from the 5s multiple they wrote, e.g., “15, 16, 17”
Focus first on minutes below 15 as the hour hand is close to the hour (top row in image below). Then address time with minutes between 16 and 30 because the hour hand has moved further away from the hour and it starts to get tricky for students to determine the hour. To address this, you can shade in the tic marks between the hours. Notice that I do not shade the subsequent hour. This also sets the stage for time when the hour hand is close to the subsequent hour (next chunk).
Time with the minute hand on the left side is tricky because the hour hand is close to the subsequent hour. The aforementioned shading can help. I also find it useful to have the student notice that the hour hand is not at the 12 yet, but almost. You can have students draw the marking and word as I did below.
Finally, there is a need to generalize. You can print images of clocks from a Google Images search into a handout and use the same strategies from above. This would be followed by actual clocks.
I previously posted a scaffolded handout and (subsequently posted) for identifying elapsed time between times on a pair of presented clocks (see image below of a page from the handout.)
A parent asked for a possible IEP objective. Here is one, along with some explanation.
Let’s start with a real life scenario many of our students may face. A municipal bus stops at a location a 7:04am. The individual is supposed to be at work at 7:30am. How much time does he have to walk to work from the drop off location? We can use this real life scenario to inform an IEP objective.
Here is a possible objective:
Given two times in a real life situation, presented with visuals and written or verbal context, Billy will identify the elapsed time. (For example: The bus drops you off at 7:23am and you have walk to work by 7:45am. How much time do you have to walk?). He will do so 9 out of 10 times correctly over 2 consecutive assessments. This would be aligned with the Common Core State Standard 3.MD.A.1.
The student can start with problems presented like what is shown in the handout I shared in the previous post as a step towards mastering the objective.
