Teaching in Paradise: Differentiated Elapsed Time Task Cards!

Happy Sunday! I hope you all had a productive weekend and are ready for this first long week back at school! This weekend I was busy finishing up a set of Differentiated Elapsed Time Task Cards!

Elapsed time is always a difficult concept for my third graders to understand-so it is helpful that we work on this skill later in the year. Students need a ton of practice with elapsed time-especially with solving their problems using a number line.

So far, we've spent a week on introducing and practicing with this skill…and like all other concepts, I have students that are at all different levels. I decided to create these task cards so that my students can practice elapsed time and be working with problems that are doable for them. I love to use task cards in my classroom because 1) it saves on copies. To have all of these problems on worksheets would be a bajillion copies for my class of 25 students. 2) My students LOVE Task Cards!!

No Joke-when I tell my kids that we will be using task cards…they actually cheer! Some ways we use task cards in our class are:

1) For whole class reviews. I will usually do some type of review game and award points to different teams.

2) A game of SCOOT. To play SCOOT-each child gets one task card to place on their desk along with a recording sheet. They solve the card that is at their desk and wait quietly until the teacher calls out 'SCOOT'. At this time, all students will scoot to the next seat and answer the card at that desk. All they take with them are their recording sheets and pencils. The task cards stay at the student desk. Continue this pattern until students are back to their original seat. My students LOVE to play this game!

3) To pull up quick problems to give to kids while working with small groups

4)Centers. Sometimes the students just take a few cards at a time and then head back to their seats to solve the problems. Other times I might set up a math scavenger hunt. I will post cards up throughout the room and students will need to find the card then solve it on their recording sheet.

As you can see- there are a ton of different ways to use task cards in your classroom. These are just a few ideas of how we use task cards in my classroom :)

This set contains 12 beginner level cards for those who still need extra reinforcement/practice with the basics. All of these cards have problems that are very basic and work with 30 minute, 15 minute, and hourly increments.

There are also 24 on-level cards (pink set) which have a variety of problems that require students to solve elapsed time in 2 different ways to the nearest minute. One way they may be asked to solve is to figure out the elapsed time when given the start time and end time. Another way they may be asked to solve is to find the end time when given the start time and elapsed time.

The last set is for those students who need an extra challenge. These cards are multi-step and require students to figure out the elapsed time when a break is taken, or to work backwards to find the start time.

Each of the 3 sets come with 2 different recording sheets. One sheet will require students to show their work and number lines in the boxes provided. The other sheet will just require students to write their answer (if solving on a white board or piece of paper).