Final Student Work Blog

This week we introduced the math concept of telling time. Students are incredibly motivated to learn this skill after a discussion about why this is important to know now and when they are older. One of the first homework assignments for this short unit involved a worksheet with students writing the time in digital form that corresponded to the analog clock to the hour or the half hour. Several students made an error with identifying the hour when the minutes hand was half past the hour. For example, when the clocked showed 12:30, one student wrote 1:30. This same student also wrote 10:30 when the clock showed 9:30, which is interesting because he put 10:30 as the answer for a clock in an earlier problem that actually showed 10:30. This shows me that students are confused when the hour hand is between two numbers and don't understand that it hasn't yet reached the next number. One next step to do with these students would be to have them use the clocks where both hands move simultaneously, so that they see the connection between the minute hand moving and the hour hand moving. Another next step would be to show him the two different clocks from this worksheet that he put the same answer for and talk with him about the possibility of them having the same answer in digital form if they look different in analog form.