Look at the big clock on the board. It is showing 3 o'clock right now. The two hands are doing very different jobs. One of them is telling you the hour, and one of them is telling you the minutes.

Hands up: which hand do you think moves the fastest around the clock face, and which one tells us the hour?

The clock on screen shows four different times, one after another. Before we name them, we will watch what each hand does.

First, look carefully at the two hands. The long hand is the minute hand: its job is to tell the minutes. The short hand is the hour hand: its job is to tell the hour.

Here is one clear example of their speeds. Start at 2 o'clock. The long hand sits on 12 and the short hand sits exactly on 2. When a full hour passes and the clock reaches 3 o'clock, the long hand has raced all the way round the face once and is back on 12. In that same hour the short hand has only crept from the 2 to the 3. So the long hand moves fast (a full lap every hour) and the short hand moves slowly.

Now watch each of the four times. Each time, look at the long hand first, then the short hand.

Today we work through these landmark times together on the board: 7 o'clock, half past 10, quarter past 3, and quarter to 5. We re-set the same clock for each time, dragging the hands to show it, then check the short hand and the long hand are both in the right place before we move to the next time.

Now we work through these times one at a time on the board: 5 o'clock, half past 8, quarter past 11, and quarter to 2. For each one, set the hands.

What we learned today

• The long hand tells the minutes; straight up is o'clock and straight down is half past.
• The long hand on the 3 is quarter past; on the 9 is quarter to.
• The short hand tells the hour, creeping between the numbers as the hour goes on.