Students read time to the nearest minute using hour and minute hands. The hour hand points between numbers; the minute hand points to a number representing 5 minutes. Times like 3:17 and 3:47 require recognizing minutes past and before the hour.
You already know how to read time at 5-minute intervals — when the minute hand lands on one of the twelve numbers, you multiply that number by 5 to get the minutes. Reading time to the minute builds on exactly that skill. The clock face does not change; you are now counting the small tick marks *between* the numbers to find the exact minute.
The clock face is divided into 60 equal minutes. The twelve numbers split it into twelve 5-minute sections, which is why you could already read times like 3:15, 3:30, and 3:45. Within each section there are 5 tick marks representing individual minutes. To read to the minute, identify which 5-minute landmark the minute hand has passed most recently, then count forward one tick at a time. If the minute hand is between the 3 (15 minutes) and the 4 (20 minutes) and is 2 ticks past the 3, the time is 17 minutes past the hour.
The hour hand requires careful reading at this precision. At exactly 3:00, the hour hand points directly at the 3. But by 3:30, it has moved halfway to the 4. By 3:50, it is very close to — but not yet at — the 4. This means you cannot simply read the nearest number; you must read the number the hour hand has *most recently passed*. If the hour hand is between 3 and 4, no matter how close it is to 4, the hour is still 3.
A useful strategy for times in the second half of an hour is to think about minutes to the next hour rather than minutes past the current one. 3:47 is 13 minutes before 4:00. Both descriptions are correct, and some clocks are easier to read one way or the other. Whether you say "three forty-seven" or "thirteen minutes to four," you are naming the same moment. Practicing both phrasings builds flexible number sense about the 60-minute cycle that underlies elapsed time — the next concept you will study.
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