A couple of years ago I was helping out in a first-grade classroom, and one of the things the students were being taught was how to tell time. However, the children weren’t learning how to tell time, because the teacher was using the old method of drawing clocks on the chock board and handing out handouts with different clocks with times on them. What the children really needed was a hands-on way of learning how to tell time, and I knew just the way to do it, but I needed to approach the teacher and suggest my idea to her and get it approved. Of course, the teacher approved it and let me show her students a fun way of telling time on a clock.
The first way I taught the children how to tell time was by bring in a bunch of different kinds of clocks such as a digital, a battery-operated one with actual hands pointing to numbers and some watches. I set up stations around the classroom placing a different kind of clock in each station with a time programmed in each one of them. Then I had the students go to each station and try to read each clock and write down the time the saw on the clock. The children thought going to each station and seeing each clock and the time was way better than learning how to tell time the way they had been and they had a lot of fun and began learning how to tell time. Soon after the teacher and I did that activity with the students we noticed some of the children trying to read the time of the classroom clock and actually getting it right.
The second method I used was by having flash cards with different kinds of clocks on them with different times on each clock flash card. I had the children form a line just as you would a spelling bee and asked the children to read each time correctly to me when it was there turn. When a child would read the time on the clock flash card right to me they would go to the back of the line and have another turn at getting to read another clock flash card to me, and when a child got the flash card wrong I sent them back to there seats to study a bit more. I did the flash cards until there was only one child left. Of coarse the one child left got every flash card they saw right and won the game, but the point of the flash card game was to allow the students to have fun while learning how to tell time, and get motivate and ready to learn how to tell time.
The third method I used was by having the students make their own paper clocks with the clocks telling a different time. Some students chose to make paper watches with times on them, other chose to make hand clocks, and some students made digital clocks with times on them. Once all the children were done making their paper clocks with times on them I asked them to share the clock they made with the time on them to the class so that all the students could see the different kinds of clocks and times. This method of teaching really worked well for the students.
By using these methods of teaching the students how to tell time really taught them something because they were hands on and having fun. When you teach a child with hand outs and using a chock board a child will barely learn anything because they will get board and start to space out. When you teach a child hands on and there having fun they are absorbing everything you are teaching them. If you are a teacher and are trying to teach your students how to tell time, I would suggest you try using some of these methods!
