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.
CAPS links
- Grades R–1Talks about the passing of time, orders events in the day, and names the days of the week and months.
- Grade 2Tells 12-hour time on analogue clocks in hours and half hours, then quarter hours.
- Grade 3Reads hours, half hours, quarter hours and minutes on analogue and digital clocks, including cell phones.
- Grade 4Reads and writes time in 12-hour and 24-hour formats, in hours, minutes and seconds.
CAPS asks teachers to build a sense of time passing before children read clocks, so reading the clock only starts in Grade 2. A large analogue wall clock is on the list of CAPS classroom resources, and the daily calendar routine at the start of the maths lesson keeps days and months in front of children.
These sheets use analogue clocks only, so add digital times, which Grade 3 brings in, by writing them beside the clock in class.
Summarised in our own words from the DBE’s CAPS for Mathematics, Foundation Phase and Intermediate Phase Grades 4–6 (2011).
