First Language (Dinka) Literacy as a Foundation for English ...

Section 2: Teaching Ideas
Telling the time
Cardboard practice clocks
The original plan was for the learners to sign in and out of class each day. It quickly
became apparent that this would not be possible at first, because none of the learners
could read an analogue clock.
Work started on clock reading, which proved to be a very complex skill indeed. To start,
the class focussed on reading the hours and minutes round the clock. Once the hours
and minutes were roughly okay (and everyone understood the concept that ‘4’ can mean
either ‘4’ or ‘20’), the class mainly practised using cardboard clocks – either listening to a
time and making it, or looking at a time and saying it. To learn to write a time, the practice
was mainly listening and writing on the board so everyone could see and check.
There were also a few sessions using commercially available worksheets eg pages with
pictures of clocks, which the learners had to look at then write the time. These sessions
were spectacularly unsuccessful, with an overall atmosphere of disconnected silence.
Towards the end of the course, the sign-in book was introduced, discussed and then
used with increasing accuracy and ease by most.
This class really illuminated the complexity of clock reading. A plea to teachers of this
type of learner group: please stick to digital formats, even when using analogue clocks!
Conceptualising and saying four fifteen is much easier than a quarter past four, especially
when that ends up being transformed into 4.15 in writing.
© Commonwealth of Australia 2009 Dinka-English Literacy Project Page 29