How to teach telling the time, step by step
Most children learn to tell time in the same order: first o’clock, then half past, then quarter past and quarter to, then every five minutes, and finally any minute. Each level here matches one of those steps, so a sheet never asks for more than your class has learned.
Two kinds of practice
Read the clock
Children look at where the hands point and write the time. This builds reading the hour hand first, then the minute hand.
Draw the hands
Children see a time such as 7:30 and draw both hands. It is harder than reading, because they have to remember that the hour hand sits between the numbers once the minutes pass the hour.
Irish curriculum links
- InfantsStage 1 Time: children build a sense of time through daily routines and the calendar, and learn that each hour has its own space on the clock face.
- 1st–2nd ClassStage 2: children learn how time is measured and shown on analogue and digital clocks, and explore different ways of saying the same time.
- 3rd–4th ClassStage 3: children compare and measure time in suitable units, and the toolkit adds 12-hour and 24-hour times.
Irish children say “half past”, “quarter past” and “quarter to”, the same words these sheets use. In Gaeilge, o’clock is “a chlog”, as in a trí a chlog, so a clock sheet can be read aloud in both languages.
Real timetables are a good source of questions from 3rd Class up: the school day, a bus or train timetable, or the clocks going back in October. The toolkit brings in Greenwich Mean Time for 5th and 6th Class.
Summarised in our own words from the Primary Mathematics Curriculum (2023) and the NCCA Mathematics Toolkit.
