Idea: Learn to tell the time
Many children get the hang of telling the time with difficulty. Teacher Marie-Louise Vroemen devised a method that sticks as a kind of mantra.
image: Pixabay
Marie-Louise Vroemen has worked in education for almost thirty years, the last 22 of which at Lichtenbeek, a school for special education in Arnhem. Again and again she sees children struggling to tell the time. “Learning full hours usually goes well,” she explains, “but the half hours are actually illogical to them. If the hour hand is between 6 and 7, they don't really understand whether it's half past five or half past five. ” Often things go completely wrong when it is time for the next step: the quarters. "It seems as if they just forget the whole and half hours."
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There had to be a better way to teach it to her students, she thought. “I've been looking for it for years,” says Vroemen. "I have asked every teacher or remedial teacher I encountered, but although they confirmed that telling the time is very difficult for many children, no one had a good solution."
She found that the words 'for' and 'about' said nothing at all. “Some had learned what 'five over' is, but couldn't understand why. If you don't understand something, it's very difficult to remember. Most of them therefore continue to doubt whether it should be 'before' or 'over'. ”
It had to be a bit tough, that worked out well
Four years ago, she suddenly woke up in the middle of the night with the solution. “I immediately got up to write it down,” she says with a laugh. She came up with a story about the runner and the trash can, which gives meaning to the concepts 'for' and 'about' for the children. She then introduced a more logical structure to teaching the times. So you start with the whole hours and then with five minutes left. With the instruction clock you show the children that it is, for example, five past eight. The big hand will then be on the 1 and you let the children count the number of lines from 12 to 1. “You point out to the children that the hour is over, over, gone, over! It is five past eight ”, Vroemen explains. “By repeating this every hour, it becomes a kind of mantra that sticks. If that little bit is in there, you can go to ten past and then to quarter past. ”
Quarters
In her approach, the children are allowed to imitate the hands with their arms, run in place to the full hour, and really throw 'the hour' in the trash. “They think it's fantastic,” says the teacher who first tested her ideas in her own classroom. “And I see the quarters falling. Many children with very difficult learning appear to be able to learn to tell the time within a year.”
She worked out the curriculum further with designer Natalie Kuypers. The digital package, which she markets in-house, consists of more than two hundred worksheets with different clock times, a manual with 25 lesson descriptions and cutting sheets with runners and waste bins. She wanted it to appeal to the older children too. “It had to be a bit tough, that worked out well,” she says proudly. “Children love to glue on the runners themselves. And there are also work sheets with all kinds of weird clocks, such as a cake with hands without numbers. When I show it on a large screen on the IWB, it really is a sport who knows what time it is first. ”
Levels
According to Vroemen, her method is certainly also suitable for primary schools. “The reactions are very positive. Due to the amount of worksheets, he takes a lot of work off teachers' hands and he is well suited to work at different levels. You will have to guide some students step by step, but others can make very big leaps in a short time. There are very difficult learning students who have already mastered it at three months. ”
Vroemen has got the hang of it: now she is tackling digital learning to tell the time. “Many students also find this very difficult,” she says. “I try to give them coat hooks, there is already a song about the witching hour and there will be an instructional video. I hope it will be ready this fall. ”
For more information, go to www.klokkijkmetdehardloper.nl
