Description
What our Time Word Problems lesson plan includes
Lesson Objectives and Overview: Time Word Problems teaches students how to solve time-interval word problems. The lesson will use time intervals in minutes. Students will learn how to use a number line diagram to represent the problems. Students should already know how to tell time by this grade level. They can probably determine the passage of hours. However, they may still struggle with the passage of hours and minutes. This lesson focuses specifically and word problems with time intervals in minutes. At the end of this lesson, students will be able to solve word problems involving addition and subtraction of time intervals in minutes by representing the problem on a number line diagram. This lesson is for students in 3rd grade and 4th grade.
Classroom Procedure
Every lesson plan provides you with a classroom procedure page that outlines a step-by-step guide to follow. You do not have to follow the guide exactly. The guide helps you organize the lesson and details when to hand out worksheets. It also lists information in the blue box that you might find useful. You will find the lesson objectives, state standards, and number of class sessions the lesson should take to complete in this area. In addition, it describes the supplies you will need as well as what and how you need to prepare beforehand.
Options for Lesson
Included with this lesson is an “Options for Lesson” section that lists a number of suggestions for activities to add to the lesson or substitutions for the ones already in the lesson. One optional adjustment to the lesson activity is to include additional ending or starting times for activity events. For an additional activity, you could have your students record their daily events on the day you introduce the lesson and the amount of time that’s passed for each event. You could also have your students record their events for an entire week, showing ending and beginning time along with the hours and minutes that passed for each event. Finally, you could have your students create word problems to be solved by a partner or the class.
Teacher Notes
The teacher notes page includes a paragraph with additional guidelines and things to think about as you begin to plan your lesson. This page also includes lines that you can use to add your own notes as you’re preparing for this lesson.
TIME WORD PROBLEMS LESSON PLAN CONTENT PAGES
Passage of Time
The Time Word Problems lesson plan includes two content pages. Many people know how to tell time using analog and digital clocks or watches. They use the time to make sure that they’re not late for school or practice, and might set an alarm to wake up at a specific time in the morning. People keep track of the time throughout the day, too! Clocks are all around us.
However, someone might have trouble figuring out how much time has passed between events in their day. If your class starts at 8:20 AM and ends at 9:10 AM, how much time has passed? It’s easy to figure out the answer using a number line. With enough practice, you won’t need the number line anymore.
The lesson includes an example number line that shows the hours on a clock with 10-minute intervals, from 8:00 to 9:10. To figure out how much time passed between 8:20 and 9:10 AM, simply count by 10s using the number line. 50 minutes passed between 8:20 and 9:10 AM!
An Example with Two Methods
Number lines can also be useful for determining longer passages of time. For example, say someone leaves for school at 7:35 AM and returns home at 3:28 PM. How many hours and minutes passed? There are two main methods that can be used to figure it out.
Method 1
Method 1 is to create a timeline, using each hour of the day and starting at 7:35 AM. If you count by the hour, you can easily determine that 7 hours have passed between 7:35 AM and 2:35 PM. Next, figure out the amount of time between 2:35 and 3:28. Start by subtracting 3:28 from 3:25, which equals 7 minutes. Next, subtract the 7 minutes from a full 60-minute hour, which equals 53 minutes. Therefore, the total passage of time between 7:35 AM and 3:28 PM is 7 hours and 53 minutes.
Method 2
Method 2 is to use a system of mountains, hills, and stones. Let’s say you go to sleep at 9:20 PM and wake up at 7:09 AM the next day. How many hours and minutes were you asleep for? First, draw a line with the beginning and end times at either end. Next, draw a mountain (a pointy shape) for each hour. There are 9 hours from 9:20 PM to 6:20 AM, so draw 9 mountains. Then, draw a hill (a rounded shape) for each 5-minute interval. There are 45 minutes between 6:20 and 7:05 AM, so draw 9 hills. Finally, draw a stone (a circle) for each 1-minute left. There are 4 minutes between 7:05 and 7:09 AM, so draw 4 circles. Count up all your mountains, hills, and stones to get a total passage of time between 9:20 PM and 7:09 AM of 9 hours and 49 minutes.
You can use a number line to determine the passage of time in other ways as well, by adding and subtracting hours and minutes. You could create a number line that has 30-minute intervals, count past the end time, and then subtract. Another idea is to create a number line with one-minute intervals to count short passages of time.
Using a number line can make identifying the passage of time much easier. Eventually, with practice, you won’t need a number line at all!
TIME WORD PROBLEMS LESSON PLAN WORKSHEETS
The Time Word Problems lesson plan includes three worksheets: an activity worksheet, a practice worksheet, and a homework assignment. You can refer to the guide on the classroom procedure page to determine when to hand out each worksheet.
CREATE YOUR SCHEDULE ACTIVITY
Students will work in pairs to complete the lesson activity. The worksheet describes a scenario in which the students have all the money they need to visit wherever they want in their town. Students will work together to create a schedule. Some of the timestamps are already on the worksheet. Students will have to determine the amount of time that passes between each interval they write.
SOLVE THE PROBLEM PRACTICE WORKSHEET
The practice worksheet lists 10 word problems for students to solve. Students will simply write their answer in the space below the question. One final question, however, requires students to use the mountains, hills, and stones method to show how much time passed in a given interval.
TIME WORD PROBLEMS HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT
There are two parts to the homework assignment. First, students will use information in a chart to answer questions about a family’s day. The chart has a column for events, a column for start time, and a column for end time. Second, students will fill in a chart with similar events. They will add the start and end times for certain tasks they do throughout the day. Then they will calculate the amount of time between those intervals.
Worksheet Answer Keys
This lesson plan includes answer keys for the practice worksheet and the homework assignment. If you choose to administer the lesson pages to your students via PDF, you will need to save a new file that omits these pages. Otherwise, you can simply print out the applicable pages and keep these as reference for yourself when grading assignments.
