Interview Activity Ideas

[Mumsaysno]

I have an interview for a Teaching Assistant position and would like some ideas please for a maths activity that I have to deliver to Year 3 and 4 children working at Level 2b-3c to help them develop their understanding of time. The activity should be no more than 20 minutes.

Im used to working in Year 1 and not really sure how much the children will already know about time so dont want to make the activity too easy or hard.

Any ideas will be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Time is a bugger to teach because Chen either know it or don't, so even if they are working at a low level in the rest of maths they might be really good at telling the time.

A good way to start it is to have loads of different clocks (analogue and digital) and watches under a cloth as well pictures of Big Ben etc and then reveal it and ask them if they know what they are learning about. Hopefully, they will say time. .

Then see what they already know about time eg digital, analogue, o'clock, half past, day, night, week, whatever. Do a simple spider diagram. This should give you an idea of where to pitch it. By the way, they are expected to know the following by year 3 end at level 3:

"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".

I'm not sure about the actual main activity though. That first bit should take no longer than a couple or three minutes.

Children not Chen!

Will you be given access to analogue clocks for the kids? If yes, then I would ask them to show you different times that you say (make it easy at first). Then move to five minute intervals. Then I would ask them to answer some problem solving questions. Eg if you leave home at 8.20 for school and it takes 20 mins, what time will you get to school? Show me on your clock. What does that say? How did you work it out? If you have some very able chn then maybe get them to set the questions towards the end (making sure they are sensible!). Maybe do all this as partner work.

Ensure that they actually say 20 to 9 rather than 8.40. If pupils know it in minute intervals, give them different problem solving eg 23 minutes

You could give each child a unit of time on a card which they put round their neck/stick on their jumper (1 second - 1 year) and ask them to arrange themselves in order from the shortest to the longest time.

This would allow for some peer and self assessment opportunities, and for the less able to be supported by their peers.

I would then perhaps ask questions like which unit of time contains 1 birthday/one episode of BGT/one sunrise etc. You could then build on this by asking which units of time are on an analogue clock face. Getting the kids to jump forward when their unit of time is called out could be fun too.