Teaching "TIME" to elementary students

Hi everyone! It's that time of year again. The time when third grade students are given 3 days to remember how to read an analog clock (is it still necessary??!) and then be expected to learn and be proficient with telling time to the nearest five minutes and elapsed time!! It's my least favorite content area to teach in mathematics the entire year. Every year my students struggle and I am dreading this year especially because my group of students are very basic in mathematics. There are not enough days to actually teach them how to tell time if they don't understand the basic concept of it (which I am worried that many of my students don't.) Does anyone have any suggestions for teaching this concept? I have manipulative's (hand held clocks for each student) and use lots of Smartboard activities to present and demonstrate the clocks but I am throwing this out in hopes of fresh ideas to teach this concept! Thank you so much!

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Permalink Reply by Kate Miller on February 12, 2012 at 11:55am

This may be more than you wanted because it deals more with elapsed time, but my special educator and I found these while planning together in December.

-Use tv grid from newspaper and have them calculate elapsed time of shows occurring. You could probably modify this by having them read the times from the analog time listed or get them to figure out how long a show is.

I also found a teacher suggestion of having students plan a field trip using time where they write out activities and plan how much time the different activities or exhibits might take. Here are two links for worksheets that we found also.

http://www.superteacherworksheets.com/time.html

http://www.internet4classrooms.com/skill_builders/telling_time_math...

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Permalink Reply by Kate Mason on February 13, 2012 at 8:24pm

Hey Wes! I will also be starting elapsed time at the end of this week. I like Kate's idea about the movie times. I have also created an activity that they plan a day at the movies with a friend but also has to incorporate the cost for some review. Be careful with Super Teacher, they just changed it so that you have to start paying for the site. Only a few activities are free.

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Permalink Reply by Bjorn Holdt on February 14, 2012 at 11:05pm

Playing this game with them can certainly help. It's called Bang on Time. I don't teach Grade 3, but my wife says it has worked really well and the kids love playing it to review their "time skills". Would love to hear your feedback on it as well.

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Permalink Reply by Elizabeth Shuman on February 15, 2012 at 10:20am

Not sure if you've seen this website before, but I did a time lesson using a few of the activities from the site. The second graders LOVED it!

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Permalink Reply by Laura Watts on February 15, 2012 at 11:24am

Great ideas are shared above! I also hate teaching time in fourth grade... Guess they didn't get it yet! Time is just such an abstract concept for kids. I do my best to teach it, but it's also something students will just understand better as they get older and use it more.

A thought I had this year, and have yet to do... Rather than teach time as a unit like we do with most other math subjects, maybe make it a daily question that way students are using it throughout the year and in different situations?