What Time Will It Be? Elapsed Hours Task Box

About this resource

EVERYTHING INSIDE — 22 pages, 148 type-in fields (verified: pypdf field count on the shipped PDF)

• 18 clock cards across 3 levels (6 cards each). Every card shows a drawn analog clock at a START hour, a fixed line underneath it ("+3 hours. What time will it be?"), and a row of digital end-time choices (3:00, 9:00, 12:00). The child reads the start hour, counts the stated number of whole hours forward — past 12 and back around to 1, never a separate rule — and marks the end time that matches. Every clock in the file is drawn in code (hour numerals, two hands, a pivot dot), the exact same engine item 63 ships with, so a start hour is always exactly that hour
• Every card twice: tinted clock faces for a laminated classroom box, and black-and-white faces for the photocopier. The two hands read apart by length and thickness, never by color alone
• A start-to-end reference strip (color and ink-saver): all twelve possible starting hours, each with its own fixed jump worked out beside it — a reference for the COUNTING METHOD, not a repeat of any card's own start-and-jump pair
• An answer key listing every card by level: the start hour shown, the hours added, and every end time printed on the card, the right one in bold
• A task box data sheet (16 rows: date, level, cards used, cards correct, cards given, percent, help given, initials)
• A percent graph, 14 sessions across, with a level box under each session
• A filled example — an invented student, 8 sessions, every percent re-counted from its own row
• A family practice page with six of the same cards, cut apart as one 3 x 2 grid
• A phrase bank: spoken lines for running the box and written starters for the note afterward, 25 lines in 6 groups
• Start Here, a contents page with page thumbnails, and a "what's next" back page

One skill, done one way: read the start hour, add the stated whole hours by counting forward around the dial, and mark the end time among the digital choices. The clock on the card is always the START time — never the answer — so a child who simply reads the hand off the clock and marks that time is caught immediately; the "+N hours" line is the only place the task lives. A dot code in the corner is the level, never the answer, so a mixed-up box sorts itself back together.

Three Levels, And The Difficulty Is How Close The Wrong End Times Sit To The Real One

• Level 1 — 6 cards, 3 end times each. Both wrong end times sit at least four hours from the real end time around the dial: landing in the right general region of the clock is enough.
• Level 2 — 6 cards, 3 end times each. Both wrong end times sit two or three hours from the real end time — close enough that counting forward hour by hour from the start, not estimating, is required.
• Level 3 — 6 cards, 4 end times each. The two hours immediately next to the real end time are always on the card, plus one more two hours away — the classic off-by-one after counting one hour too few or too many.

Seven of the eighteen cards wrap past the 12 (adding hours that carry the end time back around to the start of the dial, including the box's own worked example: a card starting at 10 o'clock plus 3 hours lands on 1 o'clock, not 13) — the one piece of clock math this box exists to practice honestly, not just the easy cases where the hours never cross 12.

DRAWN CLOCKS, REUSED ON PURPOSE — the same clock engine item 63 (Telling Time to the Hour Task Box) ships with draws every clock here: a ring, twelve tick marks, the twelve numerals, two hands and a pivot dot, so a start hour on a card is exactly that hour, in both the color and ink-saver sets, with no clip-art or emoji clock standing in for one a child could actually read.

What This Is, And What It Is Not

It is a fillable PDF: type into the data sheet, the graph header, the family page and the example-style notes, or print and use a pen. The card pages and reference strip print on cardstock or plain paper and cut along dashed lines. It works offline with no account or subscription. It is NOT an editable online slideshow or word-processor document, and it is not a test of anything.

Every start and end time is a whole hour — no half hours, no five-minute times, and no AM/PM split to track, since hours in this box simply wrap around the dial the same way the clock face already loops. It is not a telling-time curriculum: it carries no lesson sequence, no prompt hierarchy, no fading schedule and no mastery rule, and it does not decide what a percent means for a student or when to move up a level. The goal line and the criterion field are blanks for your district's own wording and your team's own number. It measures one thing: cards with the correct end time marked after counting the hours forward.

Who This Is For

Special education teachers and paraprofessionals running independent work stations or task box rotations with students who already read an analog clock to the hour and are ready for the next step — adding time onto it — case managers who need that practice to show up as data, and the families who get the practice page sent home.

More In The Collection

This is one set in the Task Box Collection; more sort, counting and life-skills boxes are being added to the collection regularly, all on the same cards-plus-data shape.