Why Time Matters

Imagine you had no idea what month it is or had no idea how long your lessons are, when school ends or when the holidays are. Imagine trying to figure out a bus timetable when you don't really understand clock time. Imagine feeling cross when your teacher says 'wait a minute' and you keep waiting and waiting and waiting...

Photo by DodgertonSkillhause at Morguefile.com

These are some of the real difficulties experienced by young people who have an insecure understanding of time concepts. These difficulties can impact on their behaviour, learning and ability to function independently and may be masked by young people using a range of strategies to 'hide' their lack of knowledge. 

Time Matters contains resources that will help to:

-assess knowledge and functional use of time concepts including calendar time, clock time, estimating time and self-organisational skills

- provide fun and age-appropriate resources to help teach time-related skills to children and young people from the end of primary school through secondary school and beyond

-suggest strategies to support time-related difficulties in a variety of settings

- raise awareness of the impact of difficulties of time-related concepts

- provide case studies based on the author's experiences of working with young people

Photo by quicksandala at Morguefile.com

Recent case

A young person (aged 17) recently gave a great example of the importance of having secure knowledge of calendar time and in particular the short date. He was working at a Food Bank and was asked to sort out the tins. He had to put the tins with the shortest shelf-life at the front of the shelf so they would get used first. He used his knowledge of time to carefully sequence all the tins by their 'use before' dates. This is impossible to do if you don't know the months in sequence...

It is always interesting to hear other examples of time difficulties so please share some of your stories.

Case Study

A Speech and Language Therapist had assessed a young person (aged 14) and established they found it very difficult to estimate time and would give wild guesses. This information proved important when the young person was questioned in court and without it there may have been questions about the reliability and truthfulness of their answers.

Let us know which resources you have found useful from Time Matters.  We are really interested in hearing the impact of time-related work...

-Clare Doran, Sarah Dutt and Janet Pembery

Speechmark authors of Time Matters