Telling the Time

I have a project I like to do on time called The Human Clock.
I have been able to use this with mixed ability groups ( basic skills ranging from Milestone 8 - Entry 3 ). The website shows a photograph depicting the current time every minute of the day. Each minute there is a different picture, many sent in by the web site viewers.The pictures are taken all around the world, some are clear like the bike shop photo others more obscure, for example the beach scene at Rimini.

The students have fun spotting the time in the pictures.

The next step is to use the digital camera to create your own photos using the college environment.These can then be made into a PowerPoint presentation and viewed as a resource for teaching the time. Still photos make a good wall display either arranged in a time line or to look like a clock. Clock faces can be put along side the photos to further reinforce skills.
Some of the resources I use are :

Real clocks.

Clock faces to print out from Northern grid for Learning.

Print outs of clocks covering hours,half past ,quarter to and quarter past .Available from Senteacher printables section.

Interactive games
Stop the Clock 1 O'clock and half past matching digital and analogue.
Stop the Clock 2 15 minute interval matching digital and analogue.
Stop the Clock 3 5 minute interval matching digital and analogue.
Stop the Clock 4 1 minute interval matching digital and analogue.
Stop the Clock 5 1 minute interval matching digital and analogue 24 hour clock.
Only Fools and Horses BBC Skillswise interactive game teaching the 24 hour clock.
Interactive Whiteboard
Interactive clock on Oswego.org . Gives a clock to put on the whiteboard -allows you to demonstrate times showing the correct movement of the hands.
Digital timer. helps teach awareness of time. Click on the help section if you are not sure how it works.
Class Timer helps teach awareness of time.
Virtual stop watch helps teach awareness of time.

Teaching time starts with an awareness of key events and an understanding of morning afternoon and evening. ( Entry 1 skill ). To begin to tell the time the student must be able to read, recognise order and understand the value of numbers. They must also be able to tell the difference between the length of the two hands of the clock. With these skills they can begin to learn o'clock . The Core Curriculum puts this as an Entry 2 Skill. After that comes a whole load of higher level skills including:
Counting and ordering numbers to 60
counting in 5's and 10's
Counting on .
Matching the level of number skill to the appropriate level time skill helped me set realistic targets for the students.