Student Work Blog- Markert

 Abby Markert

One of the lessons that my first grade class had this week was on clocks and time. Students were introduced to clocks, both analog and digital, during a mini lesson. This mini lesson showed the students how we tell time and what the hands on the clock stand for. The students asked questions that were insightful to their learning like “why do some clocks not have numbers?” or “what are the other numbers on the clock (i.e. the 30, 45, 50, etc)?” My MT did an excellent job answering these questions and the students seemed to grasp the concept. After the mini lesson the students were asked to go back to their seats to work with their own personal analog clock. The students had a few minutes to work with their clock on their own and explore them. Then my MT asked the students “can you show me 4 o’clock?” The students would then have a few seconds to get show this time on their clocks and hold it up. My MT did this a few times with different times all ending on “o’clock” or to the hour.

            During this time I walked around looking at the clocks and seeing what the students were doing. I also wanted to hear what the students were talking about and observe their thinking getting to a particular time.  One student in particular grabbed my attention with the times that she was showing on her clock. One of the times that she showed was “4:30” instead of “4:00.” I noticed that she did this and decided to ask her “why she showed this on her clock?” She responded to me that it shows “4:00.” I asked her again “how do you know that this shows 4:00?” She looked at me for a second and said, “Because the hour hand is on the 4.”

            I believe that this student realizes that the hour hand must be on the 4 for it to be “4:00” but I think confusion arises with WHY it must be on the 4. I think that she has a misconception that the only hand that matters is the hour hand on the four. This tells me that the student does not fully understand the reasoning behind why the clock works the way it does. Meaning I do not think she realizes that there are 12 hours in a day and that the minutes in the day add up to hours. She only saw the one large component of the “hour.” I think that to help assist her thinking it would be beneficial to explain these key concepts to the students. Another small misconception that I saw a lot of that still goes off this same misconception is that the students just knew that “big hand on the 12, small hand on the 4.” I would have like to see some questions about why this means 4:00 not just “that’s what we have to do.”

            This lesson was an introduction to the lesson on clocks so it may become clearer about the different parts of a clock and why it works the way it does. I think that in later lessons it may be useful to ask the students more questions about the clock. This would allow the task to become higher level and also will help the students understanding of the different areas.