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Practise telling the time on the classroom board

A large analogue clock whose hands you drag yourself, with the digital time beside it that you switch off with one button. Set a time, let the class read it out, then put the digits back. No account, no adverts, nothing to install.

How it works

  1. Move the hands

    Take the hour hand or the minute hand and turn it round. The hour hand travels with the minutes, exactly as it does on a real clock, so at half past nine it stands between the nine and the ten.

  2. Switch the digital time off

    The button under the clock takes the digits and the time in words away. All the class has left are the hands. One press brings them back, and everybody sees at once whether they had it right.

  3. Choose how far the hands jump

    In the corner at the top right you set whether the hands move by a whole hour, a half hour, five minutes or one minute. That way a young class never ends up with 9:07 on the board.

  4. Run a practice round

    In practice mode the tool puts a time on the clock itself and the class picks one of four answers. After five questions you see how many were right.

Why a clock on the board works differently from one on a worksheet

Telling the time goes wrong in two places: knowing which hand to read, and noticing that the hour hand has already moved past its number. On paper the clock stands still and that link stays hidden. On the board you turn the minute hand once round and the hour hand moves on by an hour all by itself, and then it is there to be seen.

So this is one clock, big enough for the whole room, instead of a sheet with twelve small ones. A child comes to the front, sets the hands, and the rest of the class reads along.

The digital time underneath is the check. While it is off the clock is a question; the moment you switch it on it is an answer. That is the whole exercise, and it is one button.

From whole hours to quarters and minutes

The step size decides what the class is asked to read. Start with whole hours, move to half hours, then to five minutes, and only after that to single minutes. The tool remembers what you chose, so the next lesson opens the same way.

With the time in words switched on, the line under the clock says what you would say out loud: quarter past nine, twenty-five to ten, half past nine. That is the part children find hardest, because the words jump from counting past the hour to counting towards the next one.

The buttons under the clock switch between 12 hour and 24 hour time. The hands stay where they were and only the digits change, from 9:15 to 21:15, so the link between the two stays visible.

Morning or evening, and how you can see it

A clock face cannot tell you. The hands stand exactly the same way at five in the morning and at five in the afternoon, and that is where the whole answer lies: am or pm, 05:00 or 17:00.

So there is a sky beside the clock. The sun comes up, crosses the day and goes down again, and at night the moon is up instead. The colour is the colour the sky really would be at that hour, so a class sees where in the day the clock is at a glance, without having to look for it.

In English it is there on both clocks, because English writes am and pm on a 12 hour time and a class has to be able to read that. In languages that write nothing after a 12 hour time it appears only on the 24 hour clock, where it is the difference between two answers.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need an account?

No. The clock opens straight away and works without signing in.

Can I switch the digital clock off?

Yes, that is what the tool was built for. The button under the clock takes the digits and the time in words away, and the same button brings them back.

Can I set the digital time myself as well?

Yes. There are arrows above and below the hours and the minutes. The hands follow along, so you can practise it the other way round too: set a time and let the class show where the hands belong.

How does the class know whether it is morning or evening?

There is a sky beside the clock, with the sun or the moon standing where it would stand at that hour of the day. That is what keeps 05:00 from being mistaken for 17:00, and it is also what the am and the pm on the digits agree with.

Does it work on a touchscreen?

Yes. The hands have a wide grip so a child can take hold of one with a finger. The arrow keys work too, once a hand has been selected.

Does the clock cost anything?

No. Every tool on Reppilo is free to use, with no adverts.

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