Telling the time is one of those skills that are actually quite complex even though as adults we often take it for granted.

So with students it’s often best to split it into stages.   These are the ones that I have always used, often taking a whole 45 minutes for each one!

1. Teach the numbers 1 to 12  (this is the reason we do 1 to 12 straight away instead of just 1 to 10, it makes teaching time so much easier!)
2. Teach the question & numbers 1 to 12 just adding o’clock.
3. Teach 5,10,15,20 etc.   so kids can say all the times in a “digital” fashion e.g. 1:05,  2:10
4. Teach “5 past” “10 past” etc.

The first 3 are conceptually really easy and when you split it up like this you can great some great results really quickly for the kids & parents.  For example when we were doing projects in Hong Kong they didn’t officially learn to tell the time till second grade, but we had Genki kids doing it – in English – in kindergarten, which the parents LOVED! 🙂

The fourth part is always the toughest as we don’t really use it that much and conceptually it is a bit weird,  for kids the first thought is “Why is number 8 is 20 to??  And number 2 is 10 past?”  Only 10 to makes sense at first glance 😀

So although I don’t usually like this technique,  for this theme the best way to get it stuck in the kids’ heads, before using it in the conversation games, is just a bit of old fashioned rote learning.

And Tik Tok to the rescue we can now do it in 15 seconds!   Just hit repeat until it’s impossible to forget!

@genkienglish o?????? Telling the time in English part 3 with #GenkiEnglish #learnenglishontiktok #aprenderingles #英会話 #imparareinglese #beginnersenglish #teachengllish #learnenglish ♬ Genki English Telling the Time Part 3 – 🔥 from GenkiEnglish.com 🏆