Math Journals... 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 today I wanted to see how long it really took, so I set my timer for 8 minutes.

And we started.
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.
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.}
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. 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.
You can find my math journal prompts for November HERE.
Or the complete year HERE.