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Important update from TheSchoolRun

For the past 13 years, TheSchoolRun has been run by a small team of mums working from home, dedicated to providing quality educational resources to primary school parents. Unfortunately, rising supplier costs and falling revenue have made it impossible for us to continue operating, and we’ve had to make the difficult decision to close. The good news: We’ve arranged for another educational provider to take over many of our resources. These will be hosted on a new portal, where the content will be updated and expanded to support your child’s learning.

What this means for subscribers:

  • Your subscription is still active, and for now, you can keep using the website as normal — just log in with your usual details to access all our articles and resources*.
  • In a few months, all resources will move to the new portal. You’ll continue to have access there until your subscription ends. We’ll send you full details nearer the time.
  • As a thank you for your support, we’ll also be sending you 16 primary school eBooks (worth £108.84) to download and keep.

A few changes to be aware of:

  • The Learning Journey weekly email has ended, but your child’s plan will still be updated on your dashboard each Monday. Just log in to see the recommended worksheets.
  • The 11+ weekly emails have now ended. We sent you all the remaining emails in the series at the end of March — please check your inbox (and spam folder) if you haven’t seen them. You can also follow the full programme here: 11+ Learning Journey.

If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected]. Thank you for being part of our journey it’s been a privilege to support your family’s learning.

*If you need to reset your password, it will still work as usual. Please check your spam folder if the reset email doesn’t appear in your inbox.

Teach your child to read a clock

Boy playing with clock
Reading an analogue clock is a tricky skill to master. Help your child get to grips with it with our teaching-time guide.

Reading a clock involves a transition from a general understanding that the middle of the day is lunchtime, or that the end of the day is bedtime, to actually reading a precise measurement of time on an analogue or digital clock.

Under the new 2014 curriculum, children in Year 1 need to learn to tell the time to the hour and half hour. 

In Year 2 they will go on to learning to tell the time to the quarter hour and then to the nearest five minutes. 

In Year 3 children start learning about the 24-hour clock, therefore at this point, they will start looking at digital time. 

In Year 4, children need to convert the time between analogue and digital 12- and 24-hour clocks with confidence. 

In Years 5 and 6 children solve problems involving converting between units of time.

For some children this may prove more of a challenge than for others, so make sure they grasp each concept before they move onto the more challenging ones. Ensuring that your child has plenty of practice and familiarity with clocks at home is a valuable way to support their time learning within school.

Estimating and predicting time

As your child becomes more familiar with the concept of time and is able to read an analogue clock, they will develop a more sophisticated response to time. Estimating or predicting time is a different skill to that of referring to precise times. However, it’s still something we do constantly and has even been imbibed into our cultural idioms, such as ‘wait a minute’ and ‘just a sec’. Using these expressions and other estimates of time will help your child to evaluate and judge a passage of time before it occurs, or approximate a length of time that has passed.

By asking questions, such as “How long does it take you to brush your teeth?” or “How long will it take you to get ready for school?” you are extending their estimating skills and consolidating your child's broader understanding and learning of time.

Practical ways to practise time-telling

  • Try to be precise when you talk to your child about the time, and use time-telling vocabulary such as ‘minutes’ or ‘o’clock’.
     
  • Make a clock with your child and decorate it with images of things which happen at particular times.
     
  • Use toy clocks with moveable hands and play time games.
     
  • Show your child other time-keeping devices, such as sand-timers and sun-dials.
     
  • Ask them time-related questions involving reading the clock and estimating. This will keep them thinking about time.
     
  • Try giving them a watch to wear; it will familiarise them with the clock face and encourage independent learning.