Research shows that many primary students have difficulty working out time sequences when looking at and comparing two or more calendar dates. Your students need more experiences at thinking about the days, months and years and what each of these means in relation to a time sequence.
And it is no wonder students have difficulty with this concept. Our National Curriculum virtually ignores this skill and it is rarely mentioned in class programs.
How do you know which of two dates is more recent? What clues tell you which event happened further back in time?
Time is invisible. You can’t hold it in your hand, touch, smell or taste it. It is a human construct that gives meaning to our daily lives. Over 1000s of years humans in every culture have worked out different ways to mark time passing.
We watch the sun appear to rise and set and we call this a day. We watch the moon in its daily passage around the earth and notice it takes about 7 days to go from a new to a half moon, then another 7 days to go to a full moon. Another 7 days takes you back to a half moon then another 7 days takes you back to a new moon. We call these 7-day cycles weeks and the 28-day cycle we call a month. We work out that the earth rotates around the sun in about 12 months so we create a year. And because none of these observed events is as regular as we would like them to be, we have worked out a complex system to help us see patterns and make sense of these natural phenomena. We put all this knowledge together and call it a calendar.
The activity Who is older? has been designed to help your students think about comparing calendar dates with a partner. There are 7 pages, including 18 People Cards. Each person has a different birthday so there is plenty here to get your class started.
