jeakin | Content Area Literacy

Telling Time

Grade Level: First
Content Area: Mathematics
TEKS: 111.3(b)(7)(E) tell time to the hour and half hour using analog and digital clocks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oa3vybzZa6s

Summary: This video teaches an instructor a rhyme or chant titled The Clock Song and shows how to teach and sing it with students. In the video, the presenter uses a clock manipulative as he chants the song. The song goes over rhymes for ways to remember whether the minute hand is pointing at each of the following times: o’clock, :15, :30, and :45. It includes both the number names and “half past” terms to help students also remember which are connected with each other.

Instructional Strategy:
I noticed that the first grade students in my classroom had an especially hard time once the half hour was introduced to them after learning to tell time on the hour. I feel as though they would have benefited from learning this rhyme to use along with their clock manipulatives when approaching the task of telling time on the hour combined with on the half hour. As a teacher, it might be difficult to aide students in remember the connections between :30 and calling that a “half hour” as students continue to try to grasp the concept of time and fractions. Therefore, if you teach them a memory aide, they might have an easier time remembering it at first until they get the larger concept and the reasons behind the names as they continue to grow in their understanding of deeper math concepts. I feel as though my students would have definitely benefited in being provided with a way to remember what time it was when the minute hand was pointing in a certain direction.

Author Presentation: Tomie dePaola

Tomie dePaola is an extremely well-published children’s author, who has been producing published works for over 40 years. Growing up in a home where reading, writing, and illustrating were encouraged, he has been in love with this art form for nearly his entire life. He writes mostly narrative stories about different parts of his own childhood and family and other stories about different cultures. His illustrations are recognizable in all of his books, and he still continues to write and illustrate from his home in New Hampshire at the age of 78 years old with his beloved dog, Bronte.

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore

By William Joyce

This beautifully illustrated picture book opens up the imagination to the endless possibilities that books and stories hold. The first pages begin with a man working on his own story, when his world is turned upside down, and he begins meeting all these new types of books. He ultimately lands in a library, where he creates deep relationships with all genres. The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore can be used to inspire students with the magic that books and stories contain and the importance of the stories that our own lives tell and the legacies we leave for others.

Here is a snippet from this book, so you can see if you might like to read the entire story!

“Morris Lessmore loved words. He loved stories. He loved books.

His life was a book of his own writing, one orderly page after another. He would open it every morning and write of his joys and sorrows, of all that he knew and everything he hoped for.

But every story has its upsets. One day the sky darkened. The winds blew and blew…

…till everything Morris knew was scattered – even the words of his book.

He didn’t know what to do or which way to go. So he began to wander. And wander.”