Telling the time: a step-by-step guide to reading any clock

The hour hand and the minute hand

Start with the hour hand. Cover the minute hand with a finger and ask “Which number is the short hand on, or just past?” That gives the hour, even before the minutes make sense.

O’clock, half past, quarter past and quarter to

O’clock: the minute hand points straight up to 12. The hour hand points exactly at the hour. Half past: the minute hand points straight down to 6, half way round. The hour hand is half way between two numbers.

Quarter past: the minute hand has gone a quarter of the way round, to 3. Quarter to: it has gone three quarters of the way round, to 9. There is a quarter of an hour left before the next o’clock.

Look closely at the hour hand at half past. At half past three, the hour hand is half way between 3 and 4. It has passed 3, so it is still three-something. At quarter to four it is much nearer 4, but it still hasn’t reached it.

Past and to, in five-minute steps

To the nearest minute

Clocks with Roman numerals

am and pm

A clock face only goes up to 12, but a day has 24 hours. So the hour hand goes round twice: once from midnight to midday, and again from midday to midnight. To show which half of the day we mean, we write am or pm after the time.

12-hour and 24-hour clocks

The 24-hour clock doesn’t need am or pm. It keeps counting the hours after midday: 1 pm is 13:00, 2 pm is 14:00, all the way to 23:59. Then at midnight it starts again at 00:00. Times are always written with four digits, so 7:05 am is 07:05.

Digital time

A digital clock shows the hour, a colon, then the minutes past the hour. 4:05 means 5 minutes past 4. The minutes always have two digits, so five past four is never written 4:5.

Digital clocks only count past the hour, so 7:50 shows 50 minutes past 7. On a clock face, that’s the left-hand side: ten to eight. You can read it aloud either way: “seven fifty” or “ten to eight”.

Turning digital minutes into “to”: take the minutes away from 60, and add one to the hour. 7:50 is 60 − 50 = 10 minutes to 7 + 1 = 8.

Time facts to know by heart

In a leap year, February has 29 days instead of 28. Leap years usually come every four years: 2024 and 2028 are leap years.

The knuckle trick. Make two fists side by side. Touch each knuckle and each dip between them in turn, saying the months from January. Knuckle months have 31 days. Dip months have 30, apart from February. July and August are both on knuckles, where your two fists meet.

Working out how long something takes

Times don’t work like ordinary numbers, because there are 60 minutes in an hour, not 100. So don’t take one time away from the other. Instead, count on from the start time to the end time in friendly jumps.

A film starts at 10:45 and ends at 11:20. How long is it?

1. Jump to the next o’clock: 10:45 to 11:00 is 15 minutes.
2. Jump to the end time: 11:00 to 11:20 is 20 minutes.
3. Add the jumps: 15 + 20 = 35 minutes.

You can do the same on a clock face: put your finger on the minute hand at the start time and count the fives as you move it round to the end time. For longer gaps, jump whole hours first: 09:10 to 12:40 is 3 hours (to 12:10), then 30 minutes.

Common mistakes

Tips for parents

Telling the time is learned mostly away from the worksheet. A few minutes of clock talk every day does more than one long lesson.

1. Talk about the time in daily routines. “It’s half past seven: time for breakfast.” “We leave at quarter to nine.” Point at the clock each time you say it.
2. Put a real analogue clock where everyone can see it. A kitchen clock with clear numbers and minute marks gets looked at many times a day.
3. Start with the hour hand alone. O’clock and half past first. Add quarter past and quarter to, then five-minute steps, and only then single minutes.
4. Make a visual timetable. Draw the day as a strip of little clock faces: breakfast, lessons, lunch, park, tea, bath. Children love checking the real clock against it.
5. Use timers to feel how long things take. A kitchen timer, a sand timer or a phone countdown. “Can you tidy up before the 5 minutes run out?” builds a sense of a minute.
6. Practise the 5 times table. Counting in fives is how we read the minute hand. Skip-count round the clock face together: 5, 10, 15, 20…
7. Read bus and train timetables on trips. They use the 24-hour clock. Ask “When does the next one leave? How long until it comes? How long is the journey?”
8. Ask “how long until…?” “Lunch is at 12:30. How long is that from now?” Counting on to the next o’clock and then on again is the key skill.
9. Let them be the time-keeper. Give them a watch and the job of telling everyone when it’s time for the next thing. Responsibility helps it stick.
10. Little and often. Use the clock on this page for a few minutes, or roll a fresh worksheet. Go back a step if it all feels muddled.

What do children learn, and when?

In England, the National Curriculum builds up telling the time like this:

1. Year 1 (5–6)Tell the time to the hour and half past the hour, and draw the hands on a clock face to show these times. Put events in order using words like before, after, next, first, today, yesterday, tomorrow, morning, afternoon and evening. Know the days of the week, and talk about weeks, months and years. Compare times (quicker, slower, earlier, later) and measure time in hours, minutes and seconds.
2. Year 2 (6–7)Tell and write the time to five minutes, including quarter past and quarter to the hour, and draw the hands to show these times. Know how many minutes are in an hour and how many hours are in a day. Compare and order lengths of time.
3. Year 3 (7–8)Tell and write the time from an analogue clock, including clocks with Roman numerals from I to XII, and from 12-hour and 24-hour clocks. Estimate and read the time to the nearest minute. Record and compare time in seconds, minutes and hours, and use o’clock, am, pm, morning, afternoon, noon and midnight. Know the number of seconds in a minute and the number of days in each month, in a year and in a leap year. Compare how long events last.
4. Year 4 (8–9)Read, write and convert times between analogue and digital 12-hour and 24-hour clocks. Solve problems that convert hours to minutes, minutes to seconds, years to months and weeks to days.
5. Year 5 (9–10)Solve problems that involve converting between units of time. Complete, read and understand information in tables, including timetables.
6. Year 6 (10–11)Convert between standard units of time.

Paraphrased from the National Curriculum for England. Schools only have to cover each key stage’s content by the end of that key stage, so the exact year can vary.