elapsed time

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Home : 2003 : January : 4

elapsed time
By sandy

Unfortunately, with elapsed time on our upcoming state tests, I can't wait to teach it either. Here's what I do
Make sure you have a "teacher clock" that you can move hands on for demo purposes. If you don't have demo
clocks for your students (which I don't) either borrow from a colleague, have them make one or run off copies of pages with blank clocks. Getting this difficult concept as concrete as possible is the key.
What I do is just start out with the basics. It is 2:15 on the clock (show this)...what time will it be x# of minutes from now? Practice tons of these, counting on by 5s and ones.

Then do just hours...It is 5:00. What time will it be 6 hours from now? Then you can start to combine them and get a bit trickier.
This can lead into "The movie started at 6:25 and ended at 9:15. How long was the movie?"
One way I get my kids into this is I use examples involving them. I try to make them as goofy as possible but it gets them thinking.
Finally, I encourage my kids to draw clocks to help them. They really do better with the clock or counting on their fingers.
Good luck!