Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Telling Time

My seven year old was having a hard time reading the time on an analog clock, understanding the difference between AM and PM, as well as answering questions such as "if it is 11:30 AM, what will be the time 3 hours and 20 minutes later".   Here is one site I found with a clock that kids can play with to learn to read the time.  I used it as a tool to teach my son.  The only drawback is that when you add or subtract an hour, the hour hand moves ahead or forward, but it does not show the minute hand traveling around the clock.  That would have helped emphasize the point that it takes one hour for the hour hand to move from say 12 to 1, and it takes one hour for the minute hand to travel around the clock.  In spite of that drawback, I would still say that this is a very handy tool.

Teaching Mental Math

Along the lines of Number Talks, I was looking for lesson plans on teaching mental math.  I found this site with a discussion about teaching Math to struggling students.   It has some nice tips such as:

Talk about how the pairs that make 10 can help her with mental addition and subtraction. If she needs to add 5+8, she knows that:
5 + 5 = 10
and
8 = 5 + 3
So
5 + 8 = 5 + 5 + 3 = 10 + 3 = 13

This seems like a nice start.