Read a clock in fives
Read hour and minute hands, use am and pm, and follow an hour or half hour.
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Two hands do different jobs
The short hand tells the hour. The long hand tells the minutes after that hour. When the long hand points to 12, no minutes have passed after the hour.
Each small gap is one minute. From one printed number to the next is five minutes. Start at 12 and count 5, 10, 15, 20 as you move clockwise to 4.
3:20: twenty minutes after three. The short hand moves gradually towards four.
Do not read 4 minutes because the long hand points to 4. Count four groups of five: 20 minutes.
Half an hour and one hour
A full turn of the long hand takes one hour, written 1 h. It is 60 minutes, written 60 min.
The abbreviations h and min stay the same when the number changes: two hours is 2 h, and five minutes is 5 min. Read the unit as well as the number.
Check your understanding 1 Keep hours and minutes distinct
Choose the abbreviation for each time unit.
Show answer
Hours use h; minutes use min. The number alone is not enough: 2 h and 2 min are different durations.
Half a turn takes half an hour, or 30 min. From 2:00 to 2:30 is half an hour. From 2:30 to 3:00 is another half hour. Together they make one hour.
At 2:30 the short hand is halfway between 2 and 3. It has not reached 3 yet.
Check your understanding 2 Half an hour later
You start drawing at 4:10 pm. You draw for half an hour. How many minutes past four do you finish?
Show answer
4:40 pm. 10 + 30 = 40 minutes after four.
Check your understanding 3 Find how long it lasted
A game starts at 8:15 am and finishes at 9:15 am on the same day. How many minutes does it last?
Show answer
60 min, or one hour. Both clocks show fifteen minutes past the hour, but the short hand has moved from eight towards nine. A duration tells how long the game lasts, rather than the time on either clock.
Now compare a game from 5:40 pm to 6:10 pm. It crosses six o’clock, but it does not last a whole hour.
Show answer
It lasts 30 min, or half an hour: 20 min to six o’clock and 10 min after six. Crossing an hour number does not always mean that a whole hour has passed.
The same clock can show morning or afternoon
At 7:00 am, it is seven in the morning. At 7:00 pm, it is seven in the evening. The hands can look the same, so the words tell you which part of the day you mean.
Before noon we use am. From noon until midnight we use pm. At twelve exactly, saying 12 noon or 12 midnight is clearer.
Check your understanding 4 Cross the next hour
A lesson starts at 10:35 am and lasts half an hour. What time does it finish? Show the two jumps you used.
Show answer
From 10:35 to 11:00 is 25 min. There are 5 min left out of 30 min, so it finishes at 11:05 am. You can also jump 10 min, 10 min and 10 min: 10:45, 10:55, 11:05.
Try on a clock
Set a clock to 6:25, then 6:55. Say where both hands belong each time. Keep the short hand moving towards seven as the minutes pass.
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