Telling Time and Elapsed Time Strategies for Elementary Students

Elementary teacher looking for new math games and math centers to help teach elapsed time? This blog post details how to start with telling time lesson plans and free telling time activites and telling time games. She then goes into detail about elapsed time activites and gives lots of FREE resources!

We just wrapped up our elapsed time unit and let me just say….WHEW! It was fun but it was a challenge. Partly because so many of my third graders came to me struggling to even tell time. #yikes

Tips to introduce teaching elapsed time:

I began by giving my kids a pre-assessment to determine if they even knew how to tell time. I was blown away by how many students couldn’t not correctly write the correct hour. They understood how to find the minute hand, but when the minute had was past 30 minutes and the hour hand gets close to the next hour—so many of my kids were adding an hour because it was “closer”.

Here is the template that I used:

I used the telling time quiz found {HERE}.

To snag the telling time assessment template for free enter your info below!

I used this template so I could easily group my kids for math small groups. After small groups, I gave them my {telling time quiz} again and then gave the the highest grade to put in the grade book.

If you have a subscription, BrainPopJr also has great time videos!

Try BrainPOP Family FREE for 2 weeks!

Telling Time Teaching Tip:

Do you have those kids that still struggled trying to determine the hour hand? Try this simple trick

To snag this poster {CLICK HERE}

Teaching Elapsed Time:

Now that we have FINALLY (hopefully) mastered how to tell time, we can now start on elapsed time.

In my little opinion, teaching elapsed time on a number line makes the most sense. Sometimes, the kids get confused on the charts. We started with a number line first and the charts second. After they learned both options, they can choose which one is easier for them.

Elapsed time trick: A trick that helps my kids with elapsed time was to break apart the elapsed time into manageable benchmark times. Ask your kids to look at the elapsed time and break it apart by hours, 10 minutes, 5 minutes, and 1 minute. Sure they can break it apart by 30 minutes, BUT, when the time is 12:45 and they are trying to add 30 minutes to that, there’s a higher chance they end up messing up the calculations.

Take a look:

Ask the kids to decompose the elapsed time using the benchmark times mentioned above.

As the kids added the times, they circled them to remind themselves that they have already added the numbers. Do you see how I added the 5 minutes before the 10 minutes?

This is because this made more sense when using ‘friendly numbers’

Practice elapsed time to strengthen understanding

I love it when my kids can practice in a fun way! Have you heard of dry erase pockets? I use them for everything! Check out how I use them in a blog post here.

To snag one of these write on wipe off templates, click here!

I have a set of these write on wipe off math centers. Click the image above or here to see them.

I love integrating {QR Codes} in the classroom! It’s such an excellent way for the kids to check their work and at the same time I am able pull {small groups} without the hassle of kids constantly coming up to me!

Well—they still come up at times lol, but not at a crazy rate 😅

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Written by

Amber Calderon

Amber is veteran teacher that built a successful TPT business before being recruited to lead social media and content marketing strategy for two Ed-Tech brands. She loves using her unique knowledge of the teacher marketing space to help teachers grow and scale their business with the right digital marketing strategies.