any advice on how to teach time sense to an 11-year old? she’s been struggling for years but still is not able to tell time on a clock, or remember how many months in a year, etc.
looking for any websites, instructional books, etc. memorizing doesn’t work.
Teaching time
Hi,
I have a kids teaching clock by Westclox, but I can’t remember where I purchased it. I made one similar to it for teaching purposes that looked similar to the one here: http://www.activityvillage.co.uk/clock_printout.htm
Mine is like this only reversed, with the five minute intervals on the inside, but this would work, too. If you divide up the hours section like slices of pie into different colors, your child will get it when you say “the small hand is in what hour”? For example, if the one o’clock hour is in pink, and she thinks the clock is reading 2:30, you simply ask, “is the hand in the blue (assuming the next pie piece is blue) or pink. She will say pink, and then you say, “then what hour are we in”. It is very self correcting. It also helps if you have the words, Hour and Minute printed on the hands, so they don’t forget which is which.
For dividing the clock into colors, just use a straight edge and Trace your lines out from the middle dot like you would if you were slicing a pie. Then color in each section with a different color pencil. It’s hard to explain here. If you need more help, please feel freto email me.
For the calendar, I printed off every month for the year (you could also diassemble a calendar) and hung them from Jan-Dec long way down the wall so my son could SEE the 12 months. We practiced saying the months, then when he memorized the names, I assigned each one it’s number from 1-12 and now I can say, “What is the 4th month?” and he knws the answer. “What will it be two months from now” If today is April 16, what will it be one week from today etc.”
HTH,
Andrea [email protected]
more clock stuff
http://mambo.ucsc.edu/cgi-bin/kidklok.cgi?
http://www.educational-supplies.co.uk/html/gep_clock.htm
http://www.silverliningmm.com/clockframe2.htm
http://math.donnayoung.org/m01/clocks/myspace.pdf
http://math.donnayoung.org/clock.htm
She has calendar links here too.
what is the 11 years old situation??
Learning the direction of an old fashioned clock is sometimes easier if the person in question has literacy issues. But, in this day and age on needs to learn how to read a digital clock as well. I am stealing the hyperlinks above this post for my literacy tutoring, is that all right?
Re: teaching time (clocks & calendar)
Well too bad re: digital time taking over in a way because one thing you don’t get the idea of is relationship. I think it’s the value of teaching analogue time (I mean actually why else? Everything everywhere else in my life from my watch to clock to microwave is digital). I think if someone invented a teaching clock (no doubt has) where you can move the nos. about— but still you lose that 15 til and past thing.
Oh well.
—des
digital vs analog
Yes, I think it’s very bad to let children start off telling time off a digital. They do not learn relationship. They don’t learn a sense of time in future and past. It is very hard for them to switch to analog once they’ve used a digital . If you start off with analog until they can tell time up to 15 min. intervals, then introduce the digital at the same time for comparison, I think it allows them to understand those time relationships.
After my son started getting a sense of time, we introduced “Trend” time flash cards that had digital watches on one side and analog on the other. He would set them out on the floor to use as a matching game. I think the cards are approx $8 at local teacher store.
We still practice time on my teaching clock everyday, just so I can be sure he doesn’t come to rely entirely on the digital.
Andrea
Re: teaching time (clocks & calendar)
Hi AGMWNE,
The crucial element of the Analogue approach, is that it develops Visual / Spatial Processing skills, which are essential for the mental processing of Maths.
Re: teaching time (clocks & calendar)
Dictionary.com
Time
a. A *nonspatial* continuum in which events occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future.
b. An interval separating two points on this continuum; a duration: a long time since the last war; passed the time reading.
c.A number, as of years, days, or minutes, representing such an interval: ran the course in a time just under four minutes.
d. A similar number representing a specific point on this continuum, reckoned in hours and minutes: checked her watch and recorded the time, 6:17 A.M.
e. A system by which such intervals are measured or such numbers are reckoned: solar time.
I used Patricia Smith’s “One Hand at a Time,” which is available at Amazon, to teach my 11 year old ds time. He also was just not getting it. This book steps you through a number of exercises that have you practice a lot with just the hour hand, before adding in the minute hand. I had him do 45 minutes a day over a Christmas break and by the end he had it down. (He still finds it very hard to figure out how long a particular task will take—sigh!)