When it comes to telling the time, you’re likely to do so on a digital, rather than analogue, clock. 

Smartphones have replaced the wristwatch, and for many young people, analogue time is an anachronism. Although things are starting to change - in exam halls many schools are swapping traditional clocks for digital ones - the national curriculum still carries the expectation that all pupils must learn to read an analogue clock by the age of 7.

Many struggle with it at first: pupils inhabit a world of 10-based number systems and are expected to recalibrate to 60 using a clock face on which the digit 1 actually represents 5.

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For pupils with conceptual, memory, visual or processing difficulty, however, learning to tell the time can feel like an insurmountable challenge.

So what’s the answer for these pupils? Here are some ideas that might help.

Teaching SEND children to tell the time

Bring in narrative

Misconceptions about time are common: not only is it measured on a sexagesimal (60-based) system when our mathematical rhythms are otherwise set to tens and hundreds, but the clock face is divided into multiples of 5.

To help these quirks make sense, teachers should tell the mysterious story of time. Bring in the Babylonians: to measure chunks of time and break the day down, they used the numbers 60 and 12 because they were easier to divide than 10 and 100.

On clocks came visual simplification: each number became a multiple of 5 minutes rather than its usual numerical value.

Cement this story in memory and drive engagement by giving pupils time to design their own Babylonian clocks, featuring ancient Mesopotamian numerals, colours and patterns.

To reinforce the increments of time and the system of “past” and “to” (as in “quarter to”), get pupils to write the minute numbers in regular digits alongside, showing “5” for Babylonian 1, “25” for 5 and so on. 

Speaking clocks

Embed the language and spatial elements of time through movement and voice, by encouraging your class to become “speaking clocks” and getting them to “tick” minutes with their outstretched arms. 

To begin with, the right arm should move, and children should chant in terms of “past” (“13 minutes past; 24 minutes past”) being careful to link the numbers to the position of their arm. Once they reach half past with the right arm, the left arm should take over, and children can chant in terms of “to”, while ticking upwards, from “29 to” onwards.

Curve your number line

For pupils with dyslexia or visual stress, the fainter, smaller minute marks are more difficult to distinguish on a clock face, while the numbers 1 to 12 can seem utterly misleading.

To counter this, choose a classroom clock that has clearly numbered minutes and different colours marking the “past” and “to” sides of the clock face. An EasyRead Time Teacher is a good option here.  

When modelling telling the time on the whiteboard, it is helpful to mark a curved number line around the clock perimeter. First, use loops to indicate 5-minute intervals, followed by smaller loops to indicate minutes.

As you mark, go forwards for “past” and anti-clockwise from 12 for “to”. For a good example of this in action, see the video below.

Play Pac-Man

For pupils with sequencing and language difficulty, the vocabulary of time is unhelpful: as well as cumulative counting forwards and in reverse towards the next hour, they need to remember that 15, 30 and 45 are called “quarter” and “half”.

To cement these fractions in memory, try using a visual representation. 

1. Get pupils to write the numbers 1-12 on a paper plate - this is their clock face.
    
2. Then give them a circle of coloured paper, which represents time elapsing. Get them to fold this coloured circle in half and then in half again, so they experience the process of dividing time down into halves and quarters. At each stage, revisit how many minutes these fractions represent. It’s also helpful to get them to name activities that take 15, 30 and 45 minutes to make these units of time more meaningful.
    
3. Next, cut one quarter out of the coloured circle, creating a “Pac-Man” shape that represents “quarter to”, but which can also be folded along the existing creases into the shapes for “quarter past” and “half past”. Pupils should write the fraction on each, along with the associated minutes.
    
4. Now, bring it all together. In no particular order, shout out “quarter to”, “half past” or “quarter past”. Pupils should overlay the correct fraction of time on to their clock face, and hold it up so that you can check they have it right.
    
5. During this activity, do lots of choral counting to reinforce the learning: as a whole class, and then, later, as part of individualised support.
    
6. By folding each quartile into thirds, you can use this same method to rehearse other fractions of time, such as “5 past”, “25 past”, and so on. This helps pupils to connect the fractional language with what the clock should look like.

Time after time

Time is so complex that it’s important to weave the topic routinely into your classroom practice for overlearning, especially for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities. This particularly helps those with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and those who are autistic, who may experience what we call “time blindness” - difficulty planning in terms of specific units of time and a lack of awareness of how much time is left, or the rate at which time passes.

Happily, the topic links naturally to the school day without it seeming like revision. Instead of glancing at the clock, form the habit of asking pupils, “How long have we got until…?” or “If we spend 10 more minutes on this, what time will we finish?”

These in-the-moment time challenges help to make the topic relevant and purposeful - something that pupils who struggle with maths rarely experience.

Liz Hawker is a SEND specialist who also provides coaching to parents and young people around neurodiversity. She tweets @hawkerl1