How to teach telling the time, step by step
Most children learn to tell time in the same order: first o’clock, then half past, then quarter past and quarter to, then every five minutes, and finally any minute. Each level here matches one of those steps, so a sheet never asks for more than your class has learned.
Two kinds of practice
Read the clock
Children look at where the hands point and write the time. This builds reading the hour hand first, then the minute hand.
Draw the hands
Children see a time such as 7:30 and draw both hands. It is harder than reading, because they have to remember that the hour hand sits between the numbers once the minutes pass the hour.
Curriculum links in England
- Year 1Pupils tell the time to the hour and half past and draw the hands to show these times.
- Year 2Children tell and write the time to five minutes, including quarter past and quarter to, and know the minutes in an hour.
- Year 3Pupils read clocks to the nearest minute, including Roman numerals I to XII, and use 12-hour and 24-hour clocks.
- Year 4Times are converted between analogue and digital 12- and 24-hour clocks.
English classrooms read times aloud as “twenty-five past seven” rather than “seven twenty-five”, and the curriculum asks for fluency on analogue clocks in Year 2, with digital and 24-hour times in Years 3 and 4. When you go through the answers, say each time in words.
The Draw the hands task writes times as 7:30, which is fine for checking, but Year 1 and Year 2 pupils should also say “half past seven”. The maker doesn’t print Roman numeral or 24-hour clocks, which Year 3 adds.
Summarised in our own words from the National Curriculum in England: mathematics programmes of study (DfE).
