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Telling the time – part 3

This new post focuses on some practical steps I took to support the students understanding of how to tell the time.

I have always been a great believer in kinesthetic learning; students actively engaged in their learning (as opposed to focusing on a particular style of learning because a student is deemed to learn best in that way). I have always felt that if you can immerse a student in an activity, it will very likely support their understanding.

With the above in mind, I tried a couple of ideas, both based around the students having to visualise the layout of a clock on a carpet. For example, for some students (either because of their age or ability) that were just learning about the clock face/I was just trying to consolidate understanding, I placed a chair/stool on the carpet and said it was the centre of a clock. I then asked them to sit/stand at particular numbers, having told them where 12 was. To do this, they had to visualise where the numbers would be. So, for example, students were asked to stand at 2, 4 8 and 10.

I then asked questions, such as, who is standing at 10? Or asked a student to go and stand where 7 would be. To make the activity slightly harder, I would remove the chair so that the students lost a point of reference.

My other idea was to ask the students to stand, individually, on a carpet; all facing in the same direction which was 12. I then gave them instructions, such as, turn through a 1/4 of an hour, clockwise, and then asked, where are you facing? Or, turn through 1/2 an hour, anticlockwise, and then asked, where are you facing?

This second activity opened up a lot of possibilities for the content of questions/extension material. For example, students could start the activity facing, for example, 4 and then be asked to turn/say where they were facing. Or the amount of turn could cover all the factors of 60 – 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5, 1/6, 1/10, 1/12, 1/15, 1/20, 1/15 and 1/60; plus multiples of these, for example, turn through 5/6, or 37/60, of an hour. (This got even harder if you asked students to turn through, for example, 3/8 of an hour, or 17/12 of an hour.)**
** We must not forget that minutes, as well as fractions of an hour, will all be part of this work as well.

The responses the students had to give to questions, such as, where they were facing, were certainly challenged, if they had to clearly describe where they were positioned after a challenging turn. So, here is a particular scenario:

Teacher: “Ok. Let’s move to the carpet.

Teacher: “Everybody find your own space. Face the green wall. That’s 12.

Teacher: “Turn to face 3.

Teacher: “Ok. Turn through 3/5 of an hour anticlockwise. Where have you ended up?

Student: “21 mins to the hour.

Teacher: “Great. That’s correct.

Teacher: “Can anyone describe where they are facing in a different way?

Student: “1 min before the 8.

Teacher: “Yep! That’s correct.

Now, maybe you can begin to see why I said in my introduction to this series: “The journey I have made has made me realise how telling the time can be taught and all the mathematics that can actually be taught using a clock!

Whilst trying out these practical activities, things such as fractions, were beginning to play an important role. As a result, I decided to focus on fraction understanding, as well as time, but that is another story!

When considering the use of fractions when telling the time, factors/multiples/primes, as well as the manipulation of fractions, can also play their part. So, the scenario above could become:

Teacher: “Ok. Let’s move to the carpet.

Teacher: “Everybody find your own space. Face the green wall. That’s 12.

Teacher: “Turn to face 3.

Teacher: “Ok. Turn through 4/5 of an hour anticlockwise. Where have you ended up?

Student: “27 mins past the hour.

Teacher: “Great. That’s correct.

Teacher: “Can anyone describe where they are facing in a different way?

Student: “2 mins past the 5.

Teacher: “Yep! That’s correct.

Teacher: “Now. Turn 2/3 of an hour clockwise. Where have you ended up?

Student: “7 mins past the hour.

Teacher: “Can anyone describe where they are facing in a different way?

Student: “2 mins past the 1.

Teacher: “Yep. That’s correct.

Teacher: “So, what do you think we have just done? What calculation have we done?

Student: “4/5 – 2/3.

Teacher: “Great. So, where’s the answer to this calculation? Where can we find it on our clock?

Student: “How far we would turn anti-clockwise from 3 to where we ended up – 8 mins.

Teacher: “Great! Can anyone say what fraction this 8 mins is? A clue is: it’s 8 mins out of 60.

Student: “8/60. I think, cancelled down, it’s 2/15.

Teacher: “Yep! If we did 4/5 – 2/3, we’d get 2/15.

I agree the above is a little contrived, but I hope you get the idea!

Other topics that could be integrated with clocks are angles (not just values but names, such as, right-angle and acute), transformations (for example, if the line of reflection is from 12 to 6, what is the reflection of 4 o’clock?) and multiplication tables (Hopefully this last one will be talked about in another blog post.)

That’s it for now. My next post will talk about further written work I did with clocks.

Don’t forget, via supportforteachers.com, you can find out all about the online teacher training conference, Educating the 21st Century Student, 26th to 28th August 2021.

David
nilsbird training

Telling the time – part 2

For those of you who like regular posts, I must apologise for not being that regular at the minute! Life, as mentioned before, is always busy and so, currently, posts happen when they can! (Look out soon for the sign-up form that will enable you to be kept informed when a blog post has arrived.)

In my previous post I talked about the clock-test that can be used to test for dementia. Another source about the clock-test I found is here: https://academic.oup.com/ageing/article/27/3/399/17314.

So, when you look at the cognitive difficulties that adults with dementia suffer, it sheds some light on the cognitive development of children; the clock drawing activity showing what development is/has taken place. Why has the student not drawn the numbers at the edge of the circle?

One thing I wanted to get across to the students, at the start of my teaching, is that time is continuous; it does not stop. (I feel that this is really important, as just reading a digital clock does not actually allow an understanding of this.) I also tried to get some basic facts over to the students:

Some students were able to work with these facts:

Next time (part 3) I will talk about the practical approach I used to reinforce the students’ understanding.

Don’t forget, via supportforteachers.com, you can find out all about the online teacher training conference, Educating the 21st Century Student. I now have an additional workshop on Saturday 28th August, delivered by the very capable Sanjit Chimber. It’s all about maths activities for 16 to 19 year olds.

That’s it for now.

David
nilsbird training

Telling the time – part 1

Today I’m writing my part 1 to the posts about telling the time. In my last post I introduced what I did in the Primary school and mentioned that “… putting numbers on a clock (the first challenge for the students) is harder than you might think and that’s what I’ll begin with next time!” So, more on this now!

As I started to work with the primary students I began to see the difficulties some of them had with placing numbers in the correct place round an analogue clock. (It wasn’t so much the order that the numbers had to be placed in; it was more the correct spacing between the numbers):

To enable students to have a chance of any accuracy with their clock layouts, I said, “Place the 12 and 6, 9 and 3 first; then put the other numbers in between.” This did help and some of the students took the idea on board as they created their clocks over a period of time.

Now, in doing a bit of a searching on the internet about the difficulties of drawing analogue clocks, I have discovered that, apparently, there is a drawing-clock test that is used to check for things like dementia. One article talks about clock-drawing errors, including what I have mentioned: https://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.neuropsych.12070180

Maybe my next post (part 2) will be a little more about this drawing-clock test. We’ll see!

Don’t forget, via supportforteachers.com, you can find out all about the online teacher training conference, Educating the 21st Century Student. I have some great live speakers lined up: Alison Borthwick (alisonborthwick.co.uk), Dr Alan Cross, Dr Tony Birch (bircheducation.co.uk), Sioban Parker, Stephen Atyeo and myself. Speakers who will provide pre-recorded workshops: Ann Starks, Joseph Hubbard (creationresearchuk.com) and Sheba Moyo.

Thanks for now and see you next time.
David
nilsbird training
PS As always, you can always contact me using the details in the side bar.

Telling the time – an introduction

A slight delay to this blog post but, fortunately, the marking season and the National Tutoring Programme support I’ve been doing in a primary school are coming to an end, so I can now concentrate on a few other things.

This blog post is titled Telling the time – an introduction. During my time at the primary school, I have tried to support student understanding of how to tell the time using an analogue clock:

Because of the covid pandemic, students in the UK missed a lot of face-to-face lessons and one of the casualties, for some primary students, was being taught how to tell the time. So, when I started my support, I made it my mission to try to teach the students how to tell the time using an analogue clock. (The journey I have made has made me realise how telling the time can be taught and all the mathematics that can actually be taught using a clock!)

Now, the thing is, some of you reading this post might question why it is important to teach students how to tell the time using an analogue clock, when they all have a phone! Well, throughout these posts on what I did I will try to explain why I think it is! (If you ask students if they can tell the time, they might, happily, tell you yes and confidently say, “It’s 1:17 pm”; getting the time from their phone! However, if you then showed them 1:17 on an analogue clock, they might not have a clue where to begin! I have a theory about whether this is a problem: being able to read digital time but not analogue. But I will say more about this in another blog post.)

I began my mission by drawing clocks on paper/creating flashcards for o’clock, half-past, quarter past and quarter to; then practising these with the students, getting them to draw their own clocks in their books. (To begin with I resorted to them drawing round something circular!)

Now, putting numbers on a clock (the first challenge for the students) is harder than you might think and that’s what I’ll begin with next time!

Don’t forget, via supportforteachers.com, you can find out all about the online teacher training conference, Educating the 21st Century Student. I have some great live speakers lined up: Alison Borthwick (alisonborthwick.co.uk), Dr Alan Cross, Dr Tony Birch (bircheducation.co.uk), Sioban Parker, Stephen Atyeo and myself. Speakers who will provide pre-recorded workshops: Ann Starks, Joseph Hubbard (creationresearchuk.com) and Sheba Moyo.

Thanks and see you next time,
David
nilsbird training

Engagement and repeating myself!

In a previous post I’d talked briefly about those students who lack motivation and seem to rule the roost! Do you know who I mean?

In the past, I have seen older, secondary-aged students (who lack motivation etc.) being given jobs to do, so that they are occupied and focused on something. I think I also recently experienced this with primary-aged students. That makes you wonder what can we do with those who are disengaged?

I seemed to have posted about the Zambian teacher’s conference (twice) already and mentioned that I would talk about teaching telling the time in a particular post (and never did!) To be clear, my next post will be about telling the time and there will be a lot more information about the conference as soon as it becomes available. A number of conference speakers are already arranged – see via supportforteachers.com.

David
nilsbird training

Life is still very busy but please see about a great online event!

Life is still very busy, with marking and teaching, but one thing I must mention is:

Educating the 21st Century Student, an online teacher training conference for Zambia, and beyond – Thursday 26th to Saturday 28th August 2021.

This event is an amazing opportunity for teachers based in Zambia, and beyond, to have three excellent days of training from some high quality trainers. Find out more about this event via supportforteachers.com.

David
nilsbird training

Life is still busy but great news today!

Life never gives up on what it throws at us and, in my case, that’s the marking season, which is now upon me! So, things like my maths questions have taken a back seat for the moment. Do keep an eye out for number 17. I’ll let you know when it will be available.

This short blog post is really about the great news I have: Educating the 21st Century Student, an online teacher training conference for Zambia, and beyond – Thursday 26th to Saturday 28th August 2021. This is a conference I am putting on in partnership with Chingola Private School Association – based in Chingola, Zambia (in the Copperbelt Region!).

© OpenStreetMap contributors, https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright

All the details about the conference can be found via supportforteachers.com. You can sign up there to be kept in the loop about all the arrangements for the conference. There are some amazing speakers lined up (including me!) and it’s a great price too – $30 for all three days!

I still need to write about how I’m teaching the time and fractions at the same time, but that will have to wait. Back to the marking!

See you next time.
David
nilsbird training

A lack of commitment!

As I work as a tutor I get to see a lot of different things concerning learning. With online tutoring I work with older students who, for example, are genuinely keen to improve their mathematics knowledge/want to get the right grades. With face-to-face tutoring I work with younger students (as mentioned previously) who vary in their enthusiasm and commitment.

Recent experiences in the face-to-face environment have shown me that some students seem to ‘rule the roost’ when it comes to not cooperating and just doing as they please! No doubt such students might have genuine behaviour problems but certainly they show a complete lack of commitment to their learning needs. (I would say they are definitely old enough to know how important learning is!)

So, what are to be done with students who just ‘can’t be bothered’ and will leave the classroom whenever they please?

You thoughts, as always, are welcome!

David
nilsbird training
PS How would you teach telling the time to those who have missed the opportunity in the curriculum? My thoughts on this in the next post!

Motivation – how to engage students? Part 4 (and life is rather busy at the moment!)

I am writing this post, after having provided my next bit of support, as a tutor, on a course. Before that I was doing some marking (where I fell asleep!) So, life is proving rather busy at the moment. (Have I taken too much on? – maybe!)

With my reference to Part 4 of motivation, I had a pleasant surprise from one of the 9/10 year old’s today. They said that they were now beginning to enjoy maths, when it comes to telling the time. (They have even been practising at home, it seems!) Another student, however, said they hate maths!

There seems to be such a disparity between different students’ perceptions about maths when they are young. Some like it and some hate it! I wonder if other subjects are the same?

Just so that you are aware, my Mathematics Question – Number 17 might be a little delayed due to how busy I am. Please keep an eye out here and on my website.

Bye for now.
David
nilsbird training

Motivation – how to engage students? Part 3

Today, I’d like to add some more thoughts to this engagement question.

Thinking about some 9/10 year olds I worked with this afternoon, I began to think about what level of our UK GCSE (16 year old examination) they might sit in 6/7 years time. (Assuming this examination still exists!) It is clear to me that the students are already pretty good at mathematics and therefore I would predict they would sit the highest level.

So, assuming my prediction is correct, how do we keep the engagement going/keep them interested for another 6/7 years? (I think this is especially important to think about, when work the students can do/cover now will be revisited during the first few years of high school, and then within the actual GCSE examination.)

What would you do with such ‘bright’ students, as they progress through school?

Let me know your thoughts!

Thanks,
David
nilsbird training