Hours, Minutes, and Seconds

10 min

Narrative

The purpose of this Warm-up is to invite students to share what they know about 1 hour and its relationship with other units of time. The work here prepares students to convert units of time and solve problems later in the lesson.

Launch

  • Display “1 hour”.
  • “What do you know about 1 hour?”
  • 1 minute: quiet think time
Teacher Instructions
  • Record responses.

Student Task

What do you know about 1 hour?

Sample Response

Sample responses:

  • An hour is a unit used to measure time.
  • One hour is 60 minutes long (or 3,600 seconds long).
  • It is how long some TV shows are from start to finish (including commercials).
  • There are 24 hours in a day.
  • Half of an hour is 30 minutes. A quarter of an hour is 15 minutes.
  • An hour is the time it takes for the long hand of a clock to go all the way around. 

Synthesis

  • “Other than using hours, in what other ways can we measure time?” (minutes, seconds, days, months, years, decades)
  • “When might it be more helpful to use hours than to use other units? When might it be more helpful to use minutes or seconds?”

20 min

15 min