Working with the Clock

Reading an analog clock seems to be challenging for children, especially of this generation of phones, Ipods, computers, and other electronic devices, and of course digital clocks and watches.  I don't always teach time explicitly, rather I use the clock throughout the year and throughout each day to refer to as a tool.

One way that I scaffold reading the clock is by labeling it.  These labels can be numbers or words, and can be taken down, covered, and relabeled by the children.  School clocks that have a glass casing, can also be written on with Expo or other dry erase markers, and shaded in.  For example, we will look at the clock and determine how long we have until music class.  We discuss how much working time that is, transition time, and we can actually shade in that fraction of the the clock (yes, I also teach fractions in relation to the clock face).  Here is the clock this year in the classroom.