Telling time is a skill that is going to take practice, practice, practice. This measurement and data standard requires students to tell and write time from both analog and digital clocks. In 1st and 2nd grades, students will be telling time, first, in hours, and half-hours, then, to the nearest five minutes.
- 1.MD.3/1.MD.B.3: Tell and write time in hours and half-hours using analog and digital clocks.
- 2.MD.8/2.MD.C.8: Tell and write time from analog and digital clocks to the nearest five minutes, using a.m. and p.m.
Much of your practice will be done during small or whole-group instruction. This will allow for guidance and checking for understanding. Additionally, digital telling time activities are an excellent resource to use for student practice and building mastery. Today, I am going to talk about 4 digital telling time activities that your students will love.
1- Time Travel on ABCYA
To start, ABCYA has an interactive game that helps students learn to tell time! “Time Travel” is great fun for any elementary kiddo who is learning to tell time. This game can be done on devices at school or at home without needing log-in credentials. Students will be practicing setting the time on clocks by dragging the hands of an analog clock or clicking the up and down buttons of a digital clock. There are four levels of difficulty in this game, so all of your students will be able to play to meet their skill needs!
2- Education.com Has Quite the Collection
Education.com always has a great selection of skill-specific games, and the case isn’t any different with telling time. There are at least 15 games available to your students as digital telling time activities. Set the Clock, Clock Match and Dino Fishing are some of the kids’ favorite games. This site does require a log-in but is free to anyone who uses it. I highly recommend signing up for your class. They will be able to use their usernames and passwords to log in and practice any of the skills from school or home.
3- Give Them a Tutorial on Making Their Own Clock
Directed drawings are always a hit! For a digital spin on a directed drawing, you can guide your students through a tutorial of how to make their own clock. Simply use Google Slides or Google Draw. Give step-by-step directions (either aloud, over zoom or in typed out form), building a clock from back to front. Using shapes, lines and text boxes, your students can build a clock that can be saved within their Drive. Then, you can pull the clock back up to practice reading and showing times! They can even “exchange” their clocks with friends to practice with one another!
4- Assign a Few Activity Pages for Practice
Finally, you can use pre-made digital telling time activities. These are ready-to, simply download and share specific activities with your students. This set of digital practice sheets meets the 1st and 2nd grade MD “Time” standards. Students will be practice reading clocks, telling and writing times, matching times, learning time terminology, and more! One of the great elements of activities that are within the Google platform is that you can easily check students’ understanding, grade the activities, return them for more practice or corrections, etc. So, if you’re looking for an easy addition to your lesson plans, check out the set below!
