Texas Mathematics Teacher Fall/Winter 2022 - 25

It's Time! Using the App Math Clock
to Teach Percents, Fractions, and Decimals
Ann Wheeler & DeAnna Zavala Alderman
In recent years, the need for teachers to be flexible in
their mode of instruction has been paramount. Educators
have searched for ways in which to engage students
online where they do not lose out on mathematically rich,
standards-based instruction (National Council of Teachers
of Mathematics, 2000). The following lesson outlines
such a lesson that could be utilized in a middle school
classroom with virtual manipulatives to help students
learn TEKS 6.4.G: The student is expected to generate
equivalent forms of fractions, decimals, and percents using realworld
problems, including problems that involve money (Texas
Education Agency, 1997).
Teachers can begin the lesson by having students go to
The Math Learning Center's website and accessing the Math
Clock (Clarity Innovations, 2019) app. With the Math Clock,
students are able to create digital and analog clocks. For
this lesson, we will focus on the latter. Specifically with
analog clocks in the app, they may be created with various
attributes, such as different types of hands, numbers of
fractional pieces, and colored sectors.
Since we are interested in creating clocks in the app to
learn more about percents, fractions, and decimals, select
the Add a New Clock tab (see Figure 1) at the bottom left of
the screen and have students create a Clock with Fractions
Students will then be prompted to construct clocks with
various numbers of sectors, ranging from 0 to 60. Here,
teachers can get creative with questions for students. For
example, teachers can ask students to make a clock that
is 0.25 red, ⅓ purple, ⅙ green, and the rest yellow. See
Figure 2 for sample student solutions.
Figure 2. Sample student answers with typed
and handwritten solutions
Figure 1. Add a new clock tab
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Texas Mathematics Teacher Fall/Winter 2022

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