Can you do math journals in MINUTES? Yes! You can!
I am often asked, “How do you have time for math journals?” Or “How much time to do take to do math journals?” My answer is always, “About 10 minutes.” But on one particular day, I wanted to see how long it really took, so I set my timer for 8 minutes.
I said, “Friends, take out your math journals.” I have a piece of duct tape (green) along the spine of their math journals, so they can quickly find them. They open it up to the “next blank page.”
I start reading the prompt. The moment I am done reading it, they start drawing. I encourage them to look at their neighbors and collaborate.
Paper vs. Label Prompts
Meanwhile, I start cutting the prompts out. As I am cutting, I am offering words of encouragement and clarification and move about the room. I drop the paper prompt in the lid of their crayon box and keep moving. The STUDENTS glue them in. EASY!!! {I like easy.}
The question I get a lot… “Why don’t you print them on labels?” I simply don’t because I am cheap. I print the ENTIRE months worth of prompts (25 of them) on plain paper. Close to ZERO prep needed here folks. Then each day, I select one… I DO NOT cut them ahead of time. We don’t have 25 school days each month, so at the end of the month I have no problem recycling 5 or 6 pages of plain paper. Labels?… I might cry.
Also, I can “cut and drop” those prompts way faster than I could peel and stick 20 labels on individual journals. NOTE: I added a black ribbon to help them find their next blank page.
About the time I have made it around the room, I am ready to start checking their responses.
These are a few from today.
When we were all done, I took another photo of our timer. 4-5 minutes was all it took!
Here are some prompts from earlier in the week.
Pretend that cornstalk is NOT a compound word please… oops! (I have corrected the unit.)
Again… please ignore my lack of compound word-ness!
Each prompt comes with 4-5 prompts in the same strand. Sometimes I stick to one strand (like more and less this week) and sometimes I hop around for more of a spiral review.
Keep them going all year
I love how simple the prompts are at the beginning of the year. This was our day one prompt!
Then the prompts continue to progress throughout the year.
You can find the complete year (over 200 different math prompts) HERE.
AND THAT is how we do our math journals in just a few minutes each day!
Starting Journals at the beginning of the year
Here is a blog post that will cover how I introduce journals in August. I hope it is helpful:
