missteacher

I had the chance this year (during a second training) to teach young learners of English – aged 11. It was their first year. I had to teach them about telling the time, which led me to make up a big clock, with my own little hands ! I did it from scrap and the pupils loved it ! So here are my tips:
Take some rough carboard – from boxes or bought in a stationery shop. Cut a round (approximately 30 to 40 cm diameter). Stick blank paper on one side (you may need several sheets). Write the numbers with a thick black pen. You may also draw a face to make it funnier. Make the hands also out of cardboard. Don’t forget to make the ends round to stick them in the middle of the clock. Colour them all in black.
And now you need the essential tool: a “pin” (attache parisienne in French) like this:





With the legs spread (please don’t laugh) on the back side, like this:





You need a bit of force to pierce the cardboard; you may want to “pre-pierce” with another tool beforehand.

Then, to protect your clock, you need to laminate it. Doing it in shops or buying a machine can end up being quite expensive. I bought plastifying cover for books in a roll. It’s called Tesa®. It’s like this:





It’s hard to put correctly (because it keeps rolling!) but it looks good in the end !
Here is the result:





I did another clock with colours to distinguish “past” from “to”. It corresponded with the pupils’ book. Here it is:



It’s the same principle except that I used coloured paper.





How to use it in class:
The young pupils love to manipulate things so this big clock is above all made for them.
You can act a bit to make things funnier. Keep the clock hidden in a bag and reveal it when all the pupils are ready to work. Whispering a “oohhhh” gives a better effect. I gave a name to my clock (since it has a face) – “Look, It’s Jim the clock!”. I just think it’s funny ! ;-)
Sure, first you need to introduce the new structure (telling the time). You can hold the clock in front of you and show with your finger. For example, you can say “it is five o’clock” by showing the “5” and the big hand while you say o’clock (it means that you have seen or revised the numbers beforehand with them). The same principle applies with “past” and “to”. Do it in the right direction. I mean you turn the big hand 10 minutes by 10 minutes for example while telling the time and making them repeat. Make a full round so that they see what happens when you come to “to”.
You introduce the question and make them find the answer.
After some minutes of practising, you can hand the clock to a pupil who s going to stand up, go to a friend and ask the question. You can already start this activity just with the “o’clock” structure.
You let the pupils go around, asking the question while you turn the hands everytime.
Just ask for correction when there is a mistake.
You can do this activity for most of the class. Make sure you have enough time to hand out a sheet with several clocks on it to write the times – and therefore to have something written in their copybook.
They never seem to be bored while manipulating the clock so you can start again the next class to make sure everybody understood. You can then hand the clock to one pupil directly at the beginning of the class.

Have fun !