Year 4 Teaching Sequence Autumn M2 – Read time to nearest minute on digital and analogue clocks
(three days)
Prerequisites:
 Read the time on a 12-hour digital clock and to the nearest five minutes on an analogue clock; calculate time intervals
and find start or end times for a given time interval (see Year 3 teaching sequence M5 and Year 4 oral and mental
starter bank M2)
 Find pairs with a total of 60, know half, quarter and three quarters of 60 (see oral and mental starter bank M2)
Overview of progression:
Children revise telling the time to the nearest five minutes on analogue and digital clocks and go on to tell other times,
focussing on minutes to the hour. They learn to write am and pm to show times before and after midday, and use a time line
to find time intervals. Children estimate the length of a minute, find how many times they can write their names in a minute
and then use stopwatches to time various activities in minutes and seconds. Calendars are used to help find time intervals in
weeks and days.
Note that the timing activities in session three are to give children experience of a minute, not to see how fast they can
carry out the activities!
Watch out for children who find it difficult to find time intervals that span midday, and suggest that they mark midday on
their time lines.
© Original teaching sequence copyright Hamilton Trust, who give permission for it to be adapted as wished by individual users.
Y4 Maths TS_M2 – Aut – 3days
Objectives:
 Read the time to nearest minute on digital and analogue clocks, use am, pm and 12-hour clock notation; calculate time intervals; choose
units of time to measure time intervals
Whole class
Group activities
Paired/indiv
practice
Resources
Launch the ITP Tell Time and set the clock to 9 o’clock. Display
the digital clock and set the time increment to five minutes.
Press + repeatedly until the time shown is 10 o’clock. What
happens to each clock? How is 9:35 shown on the analogue clock?
Is 9:35 after or before half past nine? How else can we say this
time? How many minutes to 10 o’clock is it? Point out that the
ITP clock shows 9:30 as 09:30 and that some clocks and
timetables show this but usually we just write 9:30.
Hide the digital clock and show various times on the analogue
clock between half past the hour and the next hour and ask
children to write the digital equivalents on their whiteboards.
Repeat this time asking them to write on their boards how we
would say the time, e.g. 20 to 4.
Set the clocks to 11 o’clock. What might you be doing at this
time? Draw out that as we don’t know whether this is 11 o'clock
in the morning or 11 o’clock in the evening, it is difficult to
answer this question. To tell us whether this time is morning or
evening, we write am, (short for ante meridiem which means
before midday) or pm (short for post meridiem, which means
after midday).
Write 11am and 11pm on the board. Point out how we don’t
necessarily write the zeros after o’clock times if following them
with am or pm. So what might you be doing at these times?
Write the following times on the board, and ask children to
write them in order from earliest to latest:
7:40 am, 7pm, 7:15am, 6:55pm, 7:27am
Group of 4-5 children
Write the following times on the
flipchart and ask children to choose six
of them to write on their whiteboards
in a 3 by 2 grid:
8:12am, 3:17pm, 8:46pm, 10:22am,
11:05am, 4:37pm, 6:24pm; 9:34am:
7:02pm, 11:58am.
Give instructions, keeping a record of
them as you do so:
If you have a time between 3 o'clock
and 4 o’clock in the afternoon, ring it.
If you have a time between 11 o'clock in
the morning and midday, ring it.
Continue until one child has ringed all
their times.
Repeat, with children choosing six
different times.
Easier: Ask children to put the times in
order first.
Children practise
reading equivalent times
on analogue and digital
clocks (see resources).
Harder: There are more
blank equivalent times
to complete.
 Activity sheet
of analogue and
digital clock
faces (see
resources)
© Original teaching sequence copyright Hamilton Trust, who give permission for it to be adapted as wished by individual users.
Y4 Maths TS_M2 – Aut – 3days
Launch the ITP Tell Time. Click on the digital icon, then set and
set the time to 10:35:
If this was the time now, and our lesson ended at 11 o’clock, how
many more minutes would be left? What if it ended at ten past
11?
Sketch a line and mark one end 10:35 and the other 11:10. We
can use a time line to help us. We can find the difference
between thee times like finding the difference between two
numbers on a number line. What significant time is between? Ask
a child to mark on 11:00. Draw a hop from 10:35 to 11:00 labelling
it 25 minutes, and a hop from 11:00 to 11:10 labelling it 10
minutes. So the difference in times between 10:35 and 11:10 is
35 minutes.
Ben goes out on a cycle ride. He leaves home at 9:27 and gets
home at 10:14. Sketch a time line to help you to find the length
of his bike ride.
A television programme starts at half past 6. It finishes at 20
minutes past 7. How long does it last? Draw a time line to show
your steps.
A programme starts at 7:35. It lasts 45 minutes. When does it
finish? Draw a time line to help you.
Group of 4-5 children
What time does school start? And end?
So what length is the school day? Draft
a time line to help, marking on midday.
How much time do you think we spend in
lessons each week? Assemblies? And
breaks?
Give children a class timetable and ask
them to find the total time spent in
lessons, the time spent in assemblies
and the time for breaks.
How did this compare with what you
thought?
Easier: Use an analogue clock to help
children in the length of lessons,
assemblies and breaks in one day.
Harder: Challenge children to find the
total time spent in lessons, assemblies
and breaks in a half term.
© Original teaching sequence copyright Hamilton Trust, who give permission for it to be adapted as wished by individual users.
Children use time lines
to help them find
differences (see
resources).
Easier: Children might
find it helpful to have
an analogue clock to help
them count on in five
minutes.
Harder: Children find
differences of more
than one hour.
 ITP Tell Time
 Activity sheet
of time
intervals to
find (see
resources)
 Analogue
clocks
Y4 Maths TS_M2 – Aut – 3days
Explain that today we are going to think about different time
intervals.
First we will think about big intervals. Ask children to work in
mixed-ability pairs to work out how many months it is until their
tenth birthdays! (Some children will be 9, and most will be 8.
Therefore the numbers of months will mostly be over 12.)
Demonstrate how we calculate this, using one or two children as
examples.
Now ask them to calculate how many hours it is until 8:00 on
Saturday morning. This will involve working out how many days
(24 hours in each one) and how many ‘spare’ hours.
Now we will work out how many minutes till lunch time (or play
time). Help chn work in their pairs to calculate this.
Finally take the class into the hall or onto the playground. How
many times do you think you could throw a ball back and forth
during one minute? Take children’s suggestions. Discuss the need
to agree a distance to stand apart. Ask children to work in pairs
to throw a ball to each other as you time one minute. Compare
the actual numbers of throws with children’s’ estimates.
How many times do you think you can run from one end of the
hall (or playground) to the other? Repeat as above.
Ask children to get into groups of six. Five children stand in a
circle and pass a ball round the group five times whilst the sixth
child uses a stopwatch to time how long this takes.
Group of 4-5 children
Do you think you have lived for more or
less than 400 weeks? How could we
work this out? How many weeks are in a
year? Ignoring leap years there are 52
weeks and one day in each year.
Give each a pair a calendar and ask
them to work in pairs to find how many
weeks and days they have lived for.
Afterwards you may wish to tell them
which years were leap years so that
they know how many days to add onto
their total.
Easier: Children use a calendar to find
how many weeks (ignoring weekends)
and days they have spent in school.
Children take it in turns
to time how long it takes
their partner to:
say the five
times table;
write their name
twenty times;
make a cuboid
using 12 cubes;
count to 0 back
from 100;
take off and
replace their
shoes and socks;
write the
alphabet
backwards;
and another
activity of their
choice.
They record their
results in a table.
Harder: Children first
make prediction for
each.
 Stopwatches
(if you do not
have enough
for one per
pair, teach
children how to
use the class
clock if it has a
second hand)
 Access to the
hall or
playground
 Balls
 Class time
table
 Calendars
NB Children will need
these results for
Teaching Sequence D2.
© Original teaching sequence copyright Hamilton Trust, who give permission for it to be adapted as wished by individual users.
Y4 Maths TS_M2 – Aut – 3days