Larisa has 18 years’ teaching experience and currently has a mixed-year class comprising children from Prep, Year 1, and Year 2. She had heard about the EasyRead 3 Step Time Teaching System and was curious to see if it had any merit – this is her story.
Prep are not expected to learn anything other than o’clock. Year 1 move to o’clock, half past and a bit of exposure to quarter past and quarter to. Year 2 also do this and then start to move into 5 min increments etc.
It has been my experience with EVERY class that they really struggle with the concept of time, particularly minutes TO the hour.
After researching your system, I got our classroom clock off the wall and grabbed some whiteboard markers. I told the kids I was going to draw all over it but that it would help them learn to tell the time.
First I wrote the numbers (minutes) around the frame of the clock on the ‘past’ side, counting the minutes as I went. Then I started on the ‘to’ side doing the same thing.
After writing all the minutes on, I drew a line down the middle of the clock and wrote ‘past’ and ‘to’ on the glass and I then showed them their new clock.
I then randomly set the hands and modelled to them the 3 step process a few times…the lights started to go on in their heads!!!!
So I thought I would start with the Year 2s and I gave a time to each one and got them to use the 3 steps; 100% success here. Then Year 1s and Preps were keen for a turn so I did the same thing with them…helping them and explaining as I went.
We played a game with it, whereby if the kids got their turn correct they got a point. There were 16 kids in the class that day and the score was 16-0 to the kids. It was brilliant EasyRead 3 Step Time Teaching System works so easily and I was impressed with the immediate results.
