It’s about time!

Gomathy Ramamoorthy

Objectives
I. To help children know the daily routine activities in their life.
ii. To let them understand the concept of time by sequencing the events in a day.
iii. To help children calculate the time duration and sequencing in terms of ‘earlier’ and ‘later’.
iv. To be able to solve simple problems involving time.

Teaching Learning Material (TLM): Day and night chart. Pictures of day-to-day activities of a child, sequencing cards for sequencing of events in a day, beads, thread, worksheet, ICT resources.

Day and night: This activity is to connect the prior knowledge of the students about the concept of ‘day and night’. I prepared the TLM using a cardboard. One side of the cardboard shows day and the other side show night. I prepared some picture cards of day and night also.

I placed the day and night chart in the class. I gave picture cards of day and night to the students and asked them to place the cards on either side of the chart. I did not give any guidance or directions to place the cards. The children placed the cards. Then I asked the students to speak about the activity. How did they place the cards? The students were smart and easily completed the activity. Moving on, I asked the students to sing the rhyme, ‘Good morning, Good morning’ everyday. Here is a link to the song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajg1ebnm3lo.

Students enjoyed singing the song. I showed the video once and after that I asked the students to take over the rhyme on their own.
Good morning, good morning,
I wake up in the morning
Good morning, good morning,
I wake up early in the morning…

This is the structure of the rhyme. Then I asked the students to continue the rhyme with their daily activities such as ‘brushing their teeth, taking a bath, praying to god, eating breakfast, going to school, and so on….’.

Sequencing of everyday activities: I gave picture cards of routine activities in the life of children and asked the students to sequence the cards.

I divided the students into groups. I gave some cards for the sequencing activity. In the beginning they did not comprehend what I wanted. They just spread the cards on the desk. So, I gave instructions to the small group and asked questions like ‘what is the activity that you do first in the morning?’ The students replied that they brush their teeth. I asked the children to pick up that card and place it in the first position. In this way, I guided them for two more steps. After that they didn’t need me. Likewise, I guided the other groups too. The activity picked up then.

They started arranging the cards. There was lots of discussion, difference of opinion and arguments among the children while doing this activity. After they finished, I noticed that some of the cards were wrongly placed. I asked the students about the logic behind the sequencing of the cards, which they reasoned and thereafter rearranged the sequence. Some of the interesting mistakes I noticed are given below.

Students placed the ‘Returning to home’ card in-between the meals card. While preparing the TLM, I chose more than two cards for every activity. So for lunch, I chose four different cards. I expected the children to place all the four cards one by one. But they kept a ‘returning to home ‘card in between ‘the meals’ card. I asked them the reason. The children responded that every day they had lunch in the school and after going home, they would again eat meals. And that is the reason they placed the card in that manner. But some children argued that the card should not come there and changed its place. The girl who had changed the card placed it below the ‘Playing in the evening’ card. Some children found that incorrect as well. They changed the position and placed it above the ‘Playing in the evening’ card. They reasoned that they would first ‘go home’ and then they would play. I was an observer all this time and only asked ‘how?’ and ‘why?’ whenever it was necessary.

I mentioned earlier that I had deliberately chosen some cards to see how the children were looking at it and reasoning. There was a ‘sunset card’ which even the teachers couldn’t guess whether it was a sunrise or a sunset. I was eager to see how the students would look at it. First the students placed it below the ‘returning home’ card. When I pointed out that it was sunrise and not sunset, a girl changed the place and kept it at the top. And again she changed and kept it below ‘playing in the evening’ card. Her reasoning was:
• They would not play with their friends in the morning.
• This ‘playing card’ was darker than the other cards.
For these two reasons she considered the card as a sunset card.

Stringing beads: I divided the students into three groups and assigned an activity to each group. I gave some thread and beads of the same size and number to each of the groups and asked the students to string the beads.

I had told them that as soon as they finish stringing the beads they should give it to me. One of the three groups did it first and came to me. And the other two groups came later. The group that came first was awarded a star. We once again repeated this activity. This time all the three groups finished it at the same time. So, all were awarded stars.

Understanding: I gave a worksheet like the one shown here to evaluate the concept of morning, afternoon, evening and night.

Assignment: I gave an assignment as well to the students to prepare an album of their day-to-day activity. Students were asked to do this activity by themselves. One of the students drew it herself and brought it. I loved it.

Children are creative and more imaginative than we are. We can’t think of a colourful sky in the night. I haven’t ever seen a colourful creative project so far. That’s why I am mentioning it so seriously.

This chapter on time for grade one is full of pictures and seems to be an easy chapter. But it’s not so. I consider the explanation given by the students as the best part of this lesson plan. Many times, the mathematics class is full of boredom and the saddest one for the children as they are dealing with numbers and operation alone. Very rarely do they get a chance to express themselves. In this learning process, students had a chance to connect and relate their experience with time in their life. The project work done by them reflects their socio-emotional background. If the main aim of teaching mathematics is to develop critical thinking and problem solving, this lesson plan did it in the best way. Let us make our children expressive and learn mathematics meaningfully and joyfully.

The author is a primary school teacher at Savarayalu Nayagar Government Girls Primary School in Puducherry. She also manages a math lab and a math club in her school. She can be reached at gomurama@gmail.com.