Time and Temperature

Ms. Habbane has begun her practicum in our class, and she is teaching Time and Temperature until the Christmas Holiday.

Our first lesson focused on identifying how long some common standards of time are:

1 minute = 60 seconds
1 hour = 60 minutes
1 day = 24 hours
1 week = 7 days
1 month = about 4 weeks or 30 days
1 year = 12 months or 365 days or 52 weeks

With these times understood, students are asked to determine how long they might do a task for. For example, is there a way to state these time amounts in a more easily understood way: "I am going to watch my show in 220 minutes"?

This is probably the most challenging aspect of our time unit, and student generally need quite a lot of practice at this skill. In class, I will allow students to use calculators to add or subtract time amounts, since they will be allowed to use them on our provincial testing at the end of the year. It is important they learn how to use them properly throughout the course of the year to help them build success.

The next lesson we are working on is actually reading time amounts on both an analogue clock and a digital clock. We learn to do this to the nearest five minutes. This is generally easier for students, although practice does not hurt! Try to have your child tell you the time when you get a chance to see how they are progressing in this area.

The final important lesson in this unit will be reading and understanding temperature in Celsius. We will also be learning some important benchmarks for temperature such as:

• water freezes at 0 degrees Celsius
• A hot day is 30 degrees Celsius
• A warm, comfortable day is about 20 degrees Celsius
• water boils at 100 degrees Celsius

We will test this unit at the end of this week. There is no need to study, as students should be well prepared in class. If we feel they are not ready, then we will wait until next week in order to review some more. 

As always, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.