elapsed time

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Home : 2005 : January : 14

elapsed time
By Tanya

Amy,
I teach fourth and don't have any magic plans but I can tell you the few things I've learned about elapsed time at this grade level. I've taught elapsed time in fourth 4x.

First elapsed time is difficult. The
very best thing that made a difference for me was to have a clock with gears available to every kid. These clocks are very expensive ($4+) but they really do help tremendously. Hopefully, your mentor/cooperating teacher has them available to you. Practice with the students several times including counting by 5s around the clock. If you can use the clocks all you need to do is ask the

question, have them act it out, then hold them up for you to see and confirm they did it right.

Act it out is a problem solving strategy so you can even use a bus/plane schedule, movie schedule, etc problem that they need to solve. Then you can see how they do with problem solving. Do you know the steps of problem solving? They're understand, plan, solve and then check.

I use tips I found this year on this board for the check step. They're on this fourth grade board in probably the November time frame. It's simply a listing step where they start at the "start time" and count on until they reach the "finish time" when they just count the hours and minutes of elapsed time.

Again a caution--if your lesson plan is simply a written plan you'll be great. But if you need to be observed in the classroom you need to expect that some kids won't get the concept. Good luck.