Numeracy - Telling Time Part 2

If you are a regular reader then you would know that one of our Numeracy topics this term is telling time.

In our last post I spoke about how we started learning how to tell time by creating a schedule and routine based on activities and then adding a time index to those activities.

This was to promote that time exists and that it has a certain structure.

From then it becomes a little more challenging.

It is suggested that by the end of Year 1 (age 6) Children should be able to represent time to an hours, quarter past and half past.

We started off using our new clock and looking at the difference between an Hour hand and a Minute hand. We used the hour hand to point to each hour provided and worked from there. This was something that the Boys quickly picked up. “The small hand points to the number and that’s the hour, right Daddy?”

To allow a lesson for learning in this further I decided that we would use a simple shape and progress the shape into sections.

We started off by drawing around a plate and creating a circle.

From there we halved the paper and discussed the concept of the circle being 1 whole and with the line through it the circle would become 2 halves.

We then turned the paper around and repeated the process.

This created and reinforced the concept that the circle is still a whole and doesn’t at any point change shape. With this I added the idea that the circle could, once again, be halved with a line going through it.

By now, however, the circle is now in 4 parts.

We then coloured in each part and identified that as a quarter.

Once we had secured the understanding of 1 whole, 2 halves and the 4 quarters we added a clock numbers to the shape.

Initially both Boys saw that when we had it the first quarter we are at that point “A quarter past” the hour and could read the time set by the two hands.

However, when we reached the half past point both boys assumed that the clock would read “2 quarter past” the hour. I had completely expected this to happen so we examined the idea of how we separated the shape highlighting the idea that there was a clear half.

After checking several times on our clock with hands, we managed to be able to identify the time from the hour, quarter past and then half past.

We then progressed to quarter too.

This was difficult to understand for them. They clearly recognised that it wasn’t a half but a new quarter. Their first impressions on this were “3 quarter past the hour” and “a half and a quarter past the hour”.

I did explain at this point that the shape was only left 1 quarter to the hour and would become “a quarter to”. They started to understand this concept but this did need a lot more reinforcing and something that we will be coming back to.