Doing Time

Prior Knowledge.

• Be able to read a clock
• Have a range of additive and multiplicative strategies
• Know how to find fractions of a quantity

Background:

This is a collection of activities and exercises for practising working with time.

Comments on the Exercises

Task 1: Using 24 
Asks students to recognise compatible numbers that make 24 and practise using the fact that a day is 24 hours.

Task 2: Making 60
Asks students to work with compatible numbers that make 60. ‘Making 60’ is an important skill for when students change from analogue to digital time and vice versa.

Task 3: How Many …
Asks students to practise their knowledge about time. For example, hours in 3 days.
This exercise involves students practising using basic facts about time. The "Time Loopy" game can be played at the end of this task.

Task 4: Writing Times 
Asks students to write times in different ways. The first exercise involves writing digital times as they would be said and the second exercise involves writing times as they would appear on a digital clock.The "Matching Times" game on the copymaster can be played at the end of this task.

Task 5: 12 and 24 hour time
Asks students to convert between 1.2 and 24 hour time and vice versa.  The "24 hour Bingo" game can be played at the end of this task.

Task 6: What time …
Asks studnets to find  times before and after a given time and the difference between two times.

Task 7: Fractions and Decimals of an hour
Asks students to calculate how many minutes in unit fractions of hours. Hours are expressed as decimals and mixed numbers.

Fraction strips (Material Master 7-7) available from Material Masters or a fraction wall could be helpful if reference to a material is required.

Task 8: Into the future
Asks students to add days to calendar date to find the new day and date. It asks studetns to add minutes to a clock time.

Task 9: Challenging problems
Asks students to calculate time, distances, and speeds. These exercises provide word problems for the students to practise the skills they have developed in the above exercises. They also encourage students encourage students to solve problems in a given context.

Task 10: Time zones Around the World
These exercises involve comparing the time of day in different parts of the world.

Exercise 1 Asks students to locate the time zone for a selection of well known cities and not so well known countries. There is a world map as link to this resource or teachers may prefer to use software or internet links.
The values from this exercise are used throughout the rest of this task.

Exercise 2 Asks students to work out how many hours ahead or behind Greenwich the cities and countries from Exercise 1 are.

Exercise 3 Asks students to work out how many hours ahead or behind places in NZ the cities and countries from Exercise 1 are.

Exercise 4 Asks students to work out how many hours ahead or behind one location from Exercise 1 is from another.

Exercise 5 Asks students to work out the time and day in the cities and countries from Exercise 1 when it is a certain time in NZ.

Exercise 6 Asks students to work out the time and day in the cities and countries from Exercise 1 when it is a certain time in New York.

Exercise 7 Asks students to work out the time and day in different cities of the world and making a decision on whether a phone call to another country in a different time zone is suitable.

Games (see Copymasters)

Time Loopy

There are 24 cards in this loopy. This activity is intended to reinforce basic facts about time. It can be used as a whole class or small group activity. For instructions on how to use a Loopy set see Copymaster.

Matching Times

There are 10 sets of cards. These cards describe time in three forms; as

• A sentence
• 12 hour
• 24 hour

The times used are straightforward and this activity is intended to reinforce students ability to recognise that time can be written in various representations.
The activity can be copied on to light card and laminated before cutting out the 30 pieces.

The "Matching Times" cards can be used for a group cooperative activity such as Fish, Memory or Families.

24 hour Bingo

This Bingo activity is for practicing conversion between 12 and 24 hour time and vice versa.

• Students draw a 3 by 3 grid in their books.
• Teacher displays one of the tables of 20 times.
• Either display the 24 hour times for practicing changing 12 hour times to 24 hour times or display the 12 hour times for practicing changing 24 hour times to 12 hour times.
• Students choose 9 times from the table and write them in their grid.
• Teacher or caller calls out times in random order from the table that the students haven’t seen.
• Students call bingo when they mark off a line of three times in their grid.