Time - Finding the duration - Planning

The Year 3 summer curriculum on Time includes an engaging lesson focused on finding the duration of events, a skill essential for understanding everyday schedules and planning. The lesson utilises a range of resources such as TV, bus and train timetables, mini clocks with moveable hands, worksheets, and a presentation to facilitate both teaching and independent learning. The key vocabulary for this lesson includes terms such as 'time', 'duration', 'calculate', 'minutes', 'hour', 'timetable', and distinctions between 'AM' and 'PM', as well as understanding the 24/12 hour clock formats. Children begin by refreshing their knowledge of telling the time to the nearest minute using small clocks, and then they explore the concept of duration by examining TV schedules and transport timetables to work out how long their favourite programmes last or the length of a journey.

During independent learning activities, students are encouraged to use practical methods such as counting in multiples and utilising number lines to calculate durations efficiently. They are prompted to consider different time intervals, like half-hours or quarters, to simplify their calculations. The lesson also includes partner discussions and reasoning questions to deepen understanding, with stem sentences provided to help articulate their thought processes. Differentiated worksheets support a range of learning levels, from simple 'o'clock' and 'half past' times to more complex calculations involving a variety of times and conversions between hours and minutes. To conclude, students reflect on the lesson, identifying what they have learnt, the skills they have used and found challenging, and the strategies that aided their learning, ensuring they remember the key points of finding event durations.