One of the challenges of teaching in a block schedule is that some high school and many middle school students struggle to focus for 80 minute, 90 minute, or longer blocks of time. I always try to break up blocks like this into shorter segments with breaks. To prevent breaks from running too long, I always use a timer. I also use timers to time break-out activities. Whenever it is possible to do so, I like to display the timer countdown on a projector or whiteboard so that all of the students can see it. Here are five free timers that you can use for these purposes.

Timer Pop
allows you to create and save multiple timer settings. For example, if I
want to have a count down that lasts for five minutes, a count down of
fifteen minutes, and a count down of three minutes I can save them all.
Then when I need one of them I’ll just click on it to start the count
down.

Online Stopwatch
is a free website that gives you the choice of a stopwatch function or a
countdown function. You can set the countdown timer for any length of
time and an alarm sounds when time is up.

Online Egg Timer is a
simple website offering three countdown timers on one screen. You can
set just one timer or run all three at the same time with different
settings. No registration is required in order to use Online Egg Timer. Just go to the site, set the countdown timer(s) using the up and down arrows, then click “start timers.”

Timer Tab is a free application offered through the Chrome Web Store and as a stand-alone website at timer-tab.com. As a Chrome app Timer Tab can be used online or offline. The website version of Timer Tab
can only be used online. Both versions of Timer Tab offer a count-down
timer, an alarm clock, and a stopwatch. For the count-down timer and the
alarm clock you can select a video to play when time expires or when
you’ve reached your specified alarm time. You do this by pasting the url
of a YouTube video into the “alarm” field below the timer. Also in both
versions of Timer Tab you can customize the background by specifying an
image url.

Timerrr.com offers two versions of
their free countdown service. The regular Timerrr displays a dial like
my grandmother used to have on top of her stove. The “egg timer” version
displays an egg timer as the countdown device. Both can be used to set a
countdown of up to sixty minutes.