Mastering Exit Tickets: The Ultimate Guide to Effective Formative Assessment and Feedback
Updated: Aug 20
Imagine this: You’ve just wrapped up a complex lesson on a challenging topic, confident that your students have absorbed the material. The next day, however, you’re met with blank stares and puzzled looks after asking a simple question about the previous day's lesson.
It’s a common scenario in the classroom—thinking that your teaching has hit the mark, only to find that some students are still struggling to grasp the concepts.
If you’ve ever felt like this, you’re not alone. Many teachers rely on traditional assessments to gauge student understanding, but these methods often fall short of providing real-time insights into how well students are grasping the material. By the time the results come in, it’s too late to make meaningful adjustments to your teaching.
In this blog post, we'll explore how exit tickets, (or exit slips) can revolutionize your formative assessment approach. We'll cover the different types of exit slips, including those for content understanding, student reflection, instructional effectiveness, and retrieval practice. You’ll also learn how to efficiently analyze exit slip data and manage grading without feeling overwhelmed.
By the end, you’ll know how to use exit slips to get immediate feedback, improve your teaching, and boost student learning outcomes.
Feedback alone is Not Enough!
According to Hattie and Timperley (2007), feedback is crucial for "reducing the discrepancies between current understandings/performance and the desired goal" (p.86). Formative assessments should not only indicate whether students have met the learning goal but also provide insights into how they can achieve it.
Effective formative assessment answers three key questions:
Where am I going?
How am I doing?
Where am I going next?
Formative assessments should reveal:
Whether students met the learning goal
Which parts of the assignment were done well
Areas where they missed the mark
Suggestions for improvement
How they can advance their learning.
Why Are Exit Slips One of the Best Strategies for Formative Assessment?
Exit slips (also known as exit tickets) are an excellent tool for checking student understanding at the end of a lesson or class period. They can also be used mid-lesson or as bell ringers at the beginning of class. Here’s why they’re so effective:
Immediate Insight: Exit slips provide instant feedback on student understanding, unlike traditional assessments which might come days or weeks later.
Non-Threatening Communication: They offer a safe way for students to express their struggles and strengths, giving insight into their thought processes.
Informed Planning: They allow teachers to plan future lessons based on student needs, enabling differentiation for various levels of understanding.
The Four Types of Exit Slips
Making them Work for You and Your Classroom Needs
Effective planning is crucial for a solid formative assessment strategy. Start by asking yourself: What do I want to know?
For instance, if you’ve taught the periodic table using the Jigsaw Strategy, you might want to determine if students enjoyed working in groups and if the strategy helped them grasp the content. In this case, your exit slip would focus on these aspects.
Conversely, if you want to assess whether students can compare elements in groups I and II of the periodic table, you’d use a different exit slip. You might also need distinct exit slips to pinpoint specific areas where students understood or struggled with the material.
I categorize my exit slips into four types based on Fisher & Frey (2004) and my own research. However, other teachers may have different classifications, and some exit slip prompts might fit into more than one category.
Type 1: Understanding Content
Exit slips designed to assess understanding focus on checking if students have grasped the lesson’s core concepts. These slips are crucial for identifying whether students met the learning objectives and can apply what they've learned.
These Exit Tickets should meet the Following Criteria:
Alignment with Lesson Goals: Ensure the questions on the exit slip directly relate to the lesson's objectives.
Coverage of Content: The slip should encompass the main points of the lesson, giving a broad overview of student comprehension.
Time Efficiency: Ideally, students should complete these slips in 5 minutes or less to maintain engagement and provide timely feedback.
Critical Thinking: Include questions that encourage higher-order thinking, such as analysis, evaluation, and creation.
EXAMPLES:
Use a Venn Diagram to have students compare and contrast two concepts, like the properties of acids vs. bases.
Present a real-world problem related to the lesson and ask students to solve it using concepts they’ve learned, such as calculating the speed of a moving object in a physics lesson.
: Ask students to create a concept map that links the main ideas of the lesson, showing their understanding of how different concepts connect.
Type 2: Encouraging Student Reflection
Reflection prompts are designed to help students think critically about their learning process, fostering deeper understanding and self-assessment.
These Exit Slips Should meet the Following Criteria:
Connection to Learning: Encourage students to relate lesson content to their own experiences or future applications.
Self-Awareness: Help students recognize their strengths and areas for improvement.
Goal Setting: Prompt students to think about how they can use their new knowledge to achieve personal or academic goals.
Examples:
Ask students to describe a real-life scenario where they could apply the lesson’s concepts, such as how principles of geometry are used in architectural design.
Have students write a brief reflection on what they found most interesting about the lesson and why, which helps in connecting the content to their interests.
Encourage students to set specific learning goals based on the lesson, like mastering a particular skill or concept in the next class.
Type 3: Evaluating Instructional Effectiveness
These exit slips provide feedback on the teaching methods used during the lesson. They help you understand how well the lesson was delivered and identify areas that may need adjustment.
These Exit Tickets should meet the following criteria:
Feedback on Instruction: Gather insights on what aspects of the lesson worked well and what did not.
Student Perception: Learn how students perceived the effectiveness of the instructional strategies and activities.
Actionable Data: Use the feedback to make informed decisions about future lessons and teaching methods.
Examples:
Ask students to evaluate a specific activity or group work session by responding to questions like, “What part of today’s activity did you find most useful, and why?”
Have students indicate which parts of the lesson were unclear or confusing, such as “Which concept from today’s lesson would you like more explanation on?”
Collect feedback on the teaching methods used, such as “Was the group discussion helpful in understanding the topic? Why or why not?”
Type 4: Retrieval Practice
Retrieval practice involves prompting students to recall information from memory, reinforcing learning, and improving long-term retention. While not a traditional formative assessment, it plays a crucial role in the learning process.
These Exit Tickets should Meet the following Criteria:
Memory Reinforcement: Focus on helping students retrieve and recall information they’ve learned.
Preparation for Future Learning: Use retrieval to prime students for new material by refreshing their memory of previous lessons.
Short and Focused: Keep prompts brief and targeted to maximize effectiveness.
Examples:
At the beginning of class, ask students to write down everything they remember from the previous lesson, such as key terms and concepts.
Have students list all the keywords discussed in the lesson, which helps reinforce vocabulary and key ideas.
Conduct a quick review session where students list out important concepts or answer brief questions related to recent lessons.
What do You Do with All of the Exit Tickets You Have Collected?
So, you've chosen to implement exit slips in your classroom, and now you're faced with a stack of papers that you simply don't have the time to review!
What do you do now?
You do not have to grade every exit slip!
Exit slips should serve as a low-pressure tool for gathering insights, fostering learning, and promoting critical thinking. The focus should not be on students providing the "correct" answer, but on assessing their comprehension of the process to arrive at the answer and their ability to engage in meaningful learning to guide them towards that goal.
If you choose to grade certain exit slips, particularly those evaluating students' grasp of the material, make sure they are simple and fast to grade since there is limited space on a half-sized slip of paper (anything bigger than that becomes a worksheet in my view).
If you want to figure out what to do with your exit tickets after you have collected them read: Do I Have To grade All that? Effective Strategies for Managing Exit Tickets
Are you ready to create exit tickets and incorporate this highly effective formative assessment strategy in your classes??
Printable Exit Ticket Variety Pack
I've created a variety pack of exit slips (task card size) that fall under each category mentioned here. All slips are editable and can be used for any subject and any grade level. You can learn more about them here.
Weekly Exit Ticket Journal With 100 Unique Prompts
Our Weekly Exit Ticket Journal Prompts—a thoughtfully curated collection of 100 prompts designed to span 20 weeks, but flexible enough to be mixed and matched for use throughout the entire school year. Each page features five prompts, perfect for keeping students engaged and reflecting on their learning journey.
Check it out here!
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References
Fisher, D., and Frey, N. (2004). Improving Adolescent Literacy: Strategies at Work. New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall
Hattie, J. and Timperley, H. (2007). The Power of Feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77 (1), 81–112. http://dx.doi.org/10.3102/003465430298487
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