Year 4
Mathematics Support Materials
Mathematics snapshot: Time
Mathematics/Measurement and Geometry/Using units of measurement
| Content Description | Relevant aspects of the Achievement Standards |
|---|---|
|
Use am and pm notation and solve simple time problems |
Students solve problems involving time duration. |
Nature of the assessment
Teacher-devised task and teacher observation
Purpose of the assessment
The teacher wanted to check if any students had misconceptions about reading time on an analogue clock before beginning work with elapsed time.
Stage in the teaching sequence
Start of teaching sequence to check prior understanding
Assessment task
Task 1: The teacher posed this scenario: Our swimming lesson starts at 10.00 and lasts for 40 minutes. He asked students to display 10.00 on their clock manipulative. He watched to see how quickly the students could show 10.00. Next he asked students to show the position of the clock 40 minutes later. He observed what strategies the students used such as whether they counted in minutes, in five minutes, whether they went to 6 on the clock (30 minutes) and counted on from there, or whether they knew 8 on a clock face can represent 40 minutes after the hour.
The teacher then used a series of examples to see if the students could show lapses of 10, 15 and 25 minutes and lapses of longer than an hour.
Task 2: The teacher altered the scenario and explained: today our swimming lesson will start at 10.05 and finish at 10.55. How long will our swimming lesson last? He again observed the students closely to see how they solved the problem.
Using the information
The teacher identified those students who were successful in doing simple elapsed time problems and asked them to work through the following scenario.Beth goes to netball training. Training ended at 5.25. It lasted 1 hour and 15 minutes. What time did training begin?He then worked closely with a small number of students who appeared to be having difficulty in reading time on the analogue clocks.