Time: Video playlist

What can you do in one hour? Sabrina takes a train trip for one hour and discusses what she can do in that time. Children give examples of what they do in one hour, showing that an hour is quite a long time but is tricky to estimate. Sabrina shows how one hour can be measured on a clock, using the example of her football training from five o’clock to six o’clock. She explains how the shorter hand on the clock is the hour hand and how this takes one hour to move between one number and the next, while the minute hand moves right round the clock in the same time.

Teachers could ask children to look at a clock and see which way the hands move, explaining that this is called ‘clockwise’. Children could be asked to run clockwise or anti-clockwise, referring to the clock to remind them. The class could play a game where the children are the hour or minute hand. When you say ‘hour hand’, children must go slowly round the room in a clockwise direction. When you say ‘minute hand’, children go quicker in a clockwise direction. When you say ‘time goes backwards’, children go anti-clockwise. Time one hour on the clock during a lesson, telling the children when it starts and ends so they begin to recognise how long one hour is. Make individual clocks using paper plates and put in longer and shorter hands with paper fasteners.