Forty pairs of eyes focused on the movement of the hour hand as the minute marker glided around the surface of a model clock face in a Primary One class at St Edward's Catholic Primary School in Lam Tin.
When the paper timepiece indicated 10:30, the teacher asked: 'Where is the hour hand? Is it still on 10, or has it moved to the middle between 10 and 11?'
Towards the end of the lesson, pupils were asked to complete a short quiz. The test consisted mainly of questions aimed at drawing them off track into saying 3:45 instead of 2:45, or 1:15 instead of 12:15.
St Edward's is one of the schools that participated in a government pilot project on coping with mixed abilities in classrooms. Dr Pong Wing-yan, leader of the project and assistant professor of curriculum studies at University of Hong Kong, said that student differences were often exaggerated in Hong Kong.
Instead, the project group identified the learning problems faced by the majority of students in a class before lessons were planned and conducted.
The Primary One class at St Edward's were assessed on their ability in reading clocks. 'We found that many did not understand the relative dynamics of the hour hand and the minute hand. We then designed our teaching targeting this weakness,' said maths teacher Kong Shuk-ha.
Students at the two ends of the ability range could also benefit from learning from their classmates' mistakes, said Dr Pong. 'Teachers generally consider student disparity as an obstacle to teaching. On the contrary, I believe it can be used as a positive input for lesson planning,' he said.