Imagine a class trip to Cork. The bus leaves in the morning, you buy a snack at a stall, and the bus home has a time on its screen. What would you need to work out first: how long the journey takes, the change from your money, or the total price of two snacks?

Watch four worked problems from a day out. For each one, notice: is it a time step or a money step?

• A journey from 9:30 to 10:15
• Two snacks: €1.50 + €0.80
• The change from €5 for that total
• A return bus that shows 16:20 on its screen. That is after midday, so take away 12 to read it as 4:20 in the afternoon.

Remember: to write an afternoon time in 24-hour form, add 12 to the hour, so 4 p.m. becomes 16:00. To read a 24-hour afternoon time back, take away 12.

• €2.30 — the two-snack total
• €2.70 — the change from €5 we found in Watch and Notice
• €3.50 — a bus ticket
• €4.99 — a lunch deal

Today we work through these together, each one a step harder:

• A hurling match has two halves of 35 minutes each — how many minutes of play altogether?
• Two snacks cost €1.20 and €0.90 — what is the total in cent?
• A €3.50 ticket paid with €5 — what is the change in cent?
• An afternoon bus screen shows 14:20 and the journey lasts 40 minutes. Count on the 40 minutes first, then read the arrival — what is the arrival hour in 24-hour time? (This one needs both elapsed time and the 24-hour clock.)