The mind of a man is like a clock

"The mind of man is like a clock that is always running down, and requires to be constantly wound up."  William Hazlitt


The half term holiday is drawing to a close, and, like many other teachers out there, I'm thinking about planning for the last half term of the year.  Fortunately, nearly all of my classes will be a repetitions of lessons that I have taught in the past.  Years 5 and 6 Spanish, however, are the ones that I have to plan and make completely new stuff for, as they are the only ones nearing the end of their third year of formal Spanish learning.  We're just finishing big numbers (we've worked out that we could now count up to 999,999 if we only had the time) and will be seguing from distances between cities in Spain to reading and understanding the timetables for buses between major cities in Spain (request from Y6 teacher who takes them all for maths).  Therefore, teaching them to tell the time in Spanish will be the next step.


So earlier this afternoon, while the girls were watching Annie (Disney version) for the nth time this week, I set to thinking of possible activities for "Telling the Time" and couldn't really think of anything.  Like William Hazlitt said, my mind had run down and needed winding up.  I decided to read back through my previous blogposts to get some ideas.  I use my own blog posts a lot, just like I use MFL Sunderland all the time, mainly because all my resources are on there.


In the hope that it will be useful to someone else, here is my list of ideas for teaching telling the time, in no particular order:

• use the RecorderPen and flashcards to practise listening and understanding and build up the times
• Tarsia puzzle, dominoes or follow-me cards with pictures of clocks or digital times on one side and times in words on the other
• Timetables for data handling
• Time ballet
• Worksheet where children read the times and then draw the hands on the clocks (or vice versa)
• Teacher says a time, children use little clocks with moveable hands to make the time and hold it up
• Fling the Teacher game
• Song - I like "Un dos tres ¿qué hora es?"
• Human lines - give 5 or 6 children a written time, they line up at the front of the room and the rest of the class have to put them in chronological order
• a game of Blue Numbers
• a game of Cluedo - columns with es la, son las/number/y cuarto, y media for example.  Teacher thinks of a combination, children have to use the grid to work out that combination.  Teacher can tell them when they have 1 part right or 2 parts right.  Lots of thinking and listening involved.
• Pin-number writing frame activity to support weaker learners.  Work out times then put them on a blank clock.
• Small cards of numbers of hours and numbers of minutes etc, teacher says time and children have to hold up the right cards.  Or give cards with the words on, show a clock face and children have to hold up the right words.
• Higher/lower variation - teacher puts a time on a clock and hides it.  Children have to work together to work out the time that is on it.  Teacher can only say "más temprano" or "más tarde"

I've also had a look around for an online teaching clock for displaying random times for speaking work.  This one from Cambridge University Press is delightful.  Click "open clock" then "show panel" to select the sort of times you want it to show, then click on the cat's paw to change the time.  I also like this one from Sandfields, as there is plenty of scope for changing the settings.

I already have some worksheets that I can use, but may well use some of the online worksheet generators to make some simpler ones quickly and easily:

• apples4theteacher
• themathworksheetsite
• SEN teacher

I'll be putting any resources that I make with my other KS2 Spanish resources.

Do you have any good ways of teaching the time?