Teaching Kids to Tell Time Using An Analog Clock

I’m sure that you’ve heard the stories in the news about some schools getting rid of analog clocks in their testing rooms because it created stress on the students because they can’t tell what time it is when they’re doing their testing.

Now, while I get why they’re doing that, I still think it’s really important that kids are able to tell time on an analog clock, but I know it’s hard.

Watch the video below or read the transcript.

Have Analog Clocks Everywhere In Your Classroom

To start off with, I don't think that teaching time should be just something we do in a small window. It should be something that we do consistently throughout the year. We should have analog clocks everywhere and have examples of when kids are going to recess, when lunch is, all of that kind of stuff.

In their daily lives, we should be showing them what time looks like and having them figure it out using an analog clock. So, that’s where I want to start off with.

But, it's not something that really young kids can learn right away. We could just make them memorize and learn how to use an analog clock. But, if we want to build their math minds, it's really about helping kids understand that the numbers on a clock have more than one meaning. And, that's tough for our young kids to understand.

Make it Concrete

The first thing that I want to encourage you to do is make it concrete. Those kids, if we really want them to understand reading an analog clock, they've gotta understand that the one doesn't just mean one. The one is kind of like a double agent. It has two meanings. The one is a one when we're talking about hours. But when we're talking about minutes, that one means something else and that it's worth a value of five. That's really weird for young kids.

So, I love this idea by Reagan Tunstall of Tunstall's Teaching Tidbits that helps us really help the kids see the concrete version of a clock. Isn't this amazing? Like, how fun would that be to do with your students? Having them put those cubes together and helping them realize that it's chunks of five.

When kids are first starting to learn to tell time, we've gotta help them physically do it and see what it looks like. And I love this idea. As we start progressing forward, we don't want them to have to be in the concrete phase. We start moving to representations and towards the abstractness.

Well, I love this one from The Frugal Fun For Boys and now her blog is also And Girls. But, this one really shows using that it's got two paper plates. On the front plate, you've got the real clock numbers and then you can flip it up and you can see the minutes. You're helping those kids see that this number also stands for something else. This idea is super huge to helping our kids develop their ability to read analog clocks is the understanding that those digits on the clock have different meanings based upon if we're looking at hours versus minutes. This is a great way to help them out.

Then this one from Scampering Through Second. I love this image because it's just, number one, pretty. I've also seen ones where the leaves at the bottom are really more exaggerated and the hour one is way smaller than the minutes to help kids remember that the minutes hand is the bigger hand in the clock.

But, I also love down at the bottom where's she's got the examples of what time it is when we go to recess, when we go to lunch, all of that kind of stuff. Giving it there so that kids can look at it and be reminded. Because the more that they see it, the more that they are exposed to it, and it takes more and more times before kids really internalize that.

We have to remember that we're working with young kids who are still trying to grapple with all of these different meanings of numbers. And then we're throwing on this idea of, okay, the one isn't worth one anymore or even one 10. Our kids in second grade are trying to grasp the difference between one when we're talking about ones versus one when we're talking about tens or hundreds or even thousands. Now, we're gonna throw in one, but this one is worth five and not 10 or a hundred. They have all of these different values of what one is worth that are being thrown at them. The more exposure and the more opportunities you can have them see that it's worth five for every amount on the clock, it will help them better internalize it.

Don’t Go Straight To The Minutes

Another big thing around telling time is don't go straight for being able to tell time to the minutes. Most standards are kind of broken up with different chunks. Take a look at your own state standards.

But a lot of times, we start off with just helping kids be able to tell time to the hour. So, they don't have to be able to tell to the exact minute but just at the hour spot. When they are able to tell it to the hour, then it's to the half hour. So, then we're doing half hour and hour. Then they get to where they can tell the quarters.

That's also another benchmark piece is when it's a quarter after or quarter 'til. Which is another weird thing because we say quarter but a lot of our kids are used to when we hear a quarter, it's worth 25. But when it comes to time, a quarter is not 25 anymore. It's because the whole is not 100. That's another weird piece.

When we tend to talk about a quarter, we are talking about it in relation to the whole being 100. But when it comes to time, our whole of an hour is really worth 60. So, that quarter and the half is not 25 and 50. The quarter is 15 and a half is 30. So, we've gotta help them grapple with those ideas.

Then we get to the point where kids can tell time to the minute. So, start with bigger chunks. You're looking for hour, half hour, quarters, and then we move into the five minute chunks and then we move into being able to tell time to the minute.

Acknowledging The Misconceptions

Now, let's talk about acknowledging the misconceptions. Again, I referenced one of them which is the whole idea of the whole not being 100. So many times kids think of the whole being 100. When they're telling time, they want to think about it as flipping over to the next hour after one hundred minutes, but it's really at 60. Which then adjusts at what our quarter and our half is.

The other misconception is the whole idea of knowing what hour it is when we get past the halfway point because our clocks try to lie to us.

Here's a little picture that I took of my watch with Mickey lying to me.

So, on Mickey here, a lot of kids might know that it's 48 minutes. They'll get to where they can say, "Okay, I bet that that's about 48 minutes," even though the minute ticks aren't really in there. So, they're having to estimate a little bit. They might say, “It's 48 minutes.” But the problem is, they'll get the hour wrong. They will say, “11:48” because the hour hand is closer to the 11 than it is to the 10. So, this is really a stumbling block for a lot of our students.

Really acknowledge that. Be sure that you are giving them analog times that reference that. If you don't have a great analog clock, that the hour hand moves in proportion to your minutes, you have to pay really close attention. If you've got worksheets or stuff, a lot of times, they won't move the hour hand to where it should be. So, it'll have the hour hand right at the 10 but the minute hand is where Mickey's minute hand is and that's not what it looks like in real life.

You've got to make sure any manipulatives, any visuals that you are using really does acknowledge the fact that on real clocks, as you're getting closer to that next hour, the hour hand is moving proportionately closer to that next hour. And the clock will try to lie to us.

That's kind of the way I talk about it with the kids. Like, "It's lying to us right now. Can we figure out the lie that the clock is telling us?"

I really hope that this has given you some ideas of ways to make telling time on an analog clock more concrete, more visual, more conceptual for your students so that we can help build their math minds when it comes to telling time.