This month, third graders have been calculating elapsed time and refining their analog clock skills by planning a party and creating a matching invitation. 

 

Working with elapsed time challenges students to transition from concrete base-10 arithmetic skills to abstract mathematical reasoning. The invitation assignment gave the third graders a creative entry point to the task. Each student chose a party theme, like Halloween, Christmas, or a pizza party, and created a slate of fun activities for a two-hour event. Students planned out the length of each activity, with the corresponding start and end times. On the back of their invitation, students used analog clocks to track the start and end time for each activity, skip-counting the length of each activity on a hand-held clock dial to ensure their plan made sense. “It gives students practice thinking through elapsed time in a real-world application,” says third grade teacher Rachel Lipkin, noting that it also has the added benefit of making the concept fun by allowing students to personalize their work.