Learning isn’t just a one-way street. It’s a continuous exchange between teaching and understanding.
As an educator, your role goes beyond delivering lessons. It’s about ensuring that students truly grasp the material and can apply it in meaningful ways both inside and outside the classroom.
Exit tickets offer a quick yet powerful way to check their understanding and guide future instruction, making them a powerful asset in your teaching toolkit.
Why Use Exit Tickets?
Exit tickets, also called exit slips, are quick and informal assessments given at the end of the class. They help gauge students’ understanding, highlight learning gaps, and give valuable feedback on your teaching effectiveness.
For example, you might ask your students to write down one takeaway from your lesson or describe how they feel about it using an emoji. Inquiry is at the front and center of exit tickets.
More than just a learning check, they also support students’ social and emotional well-being by giving them a space to express their thoughts and feelings about the lesson.
Considerations When Using Exit Tickets
As you plan to add exit tickets, here are some key considerations to keep in mind before you implement them in your classroom:
| Best Practice | Description |
|---|---|
| Align with Learning Objectives | Exit ticket prompts should directly tie into the day’s learning goals or key skills. They should reinforce critical lesson takeaways rather than feel like an extra challenge. When aligned with objectives, exit tickets become a natural part of learning and keep students engaged. |
| Keep Them Concise and Manageable | Exit tickets should be brief and easy to complete in just a couple of minutes. Overly complex prompts can overwhelm students and reduce engagement. A single well-chosen question or short task ensures they serve as quick, effective formative assessments. |
| Use Different Formats to Engage Learners | Offer varied formats to accommodate different learning styles, such as verbal responses, drawings, or digital submissions. Using different mediums like paper slips, online polls, or hands-on tasks keeps exit tickets engaging and inclusive for all students. |
| Decide How to Provide Feedback | Plan how to review and respond to exit ticket answers. Clarify whether responses will be used for instructional adjustments, private review, or class discussions. Providing feedback, even informally, reinforces learning and encourages thoughtful participation. |
| Consider Anonymous Responses | Allowing students to submit exit tickets anonymously can lead to more honest feedback, particularly when assessing student confidence or gathering reflections on teaching. Anonymity helps students express uncertainties openly, leading to more useful insights. |
Let’s take a closer look at these best practices to ensure exit tickets are purposeful, engaging, and aligned with student learning:
Align with Learning Objectives
Design exit ticket prompts that directly tie into the day’s learning goals or key skills. The question or task should target one of the lesson’s most important concepts or objectives, rather than something tangential.
By focusing on a critical point from the lesson (instead of an extra “challenge” question), you reinforce the main takeaways and avoid making the exit ticket feel like busy work. When exit tickets echo the lesson objectives, students see them as a natural extension of learning and remain engaged with the key concepts.
Keep Them Concise and Manageable
Keep exit tickets brief and to the point. Students should be able to complete the prompt in just a couple of minutes at most. Overly complex or long prompts can overwhelm students and reduce their willingness to respond thoughtfully.
Typically, one well-chosen question (or a very short task) is sufficient to gauge understanding. Clear and focused prompts ensure that exit tickets are quick formative checks rather than time-consuming chores.
Use Different Formats to Engage Learners
Vary the format of your exit tickets to maintain interest and accommodate different learning styles. Not all students express themselves best through writing, so consider options like verbal responses, drawings, or digital submissions.
For example, one day you might use a slip of paper or sticky note, and another day a quick online poll or an image-based response. Exit tickets can be delivered on paper, through a digital form or quiz, or even as an oral or hands-on task.
Offering multiple formats keeps the activity fresh and inclusive, allowing every student to engage in a mode that suits them.
Decide How to Provide Feedback
Plan in advance how you will review and respond to students’ exit ticket answers. Let students know what to expect. For instance, whether their responses will simply inform your teaching or if you wll address them in the next class.
Often, exit tickets work best as ungraded, low-stakes assessments (you might mark them as complete/incomplete rather than giving a score) to keep the focus on learning rather than correctness. However, providing some form of feedback is crucial.
Take time to acknowledge common responses or clear up misconceptions in the following lesson, or give brief individual comments if appropriate. Closing the loop by discussing results or insights from the exit tickets shows students that their input was read and valued, which in turn motivates them to give honest and thoughtful answers.
Consider Anonymous Responses
In some cases, allowing students to submit exit tickets anonymously can encourage more honest and insightful feedback. When you’re asking for feedback about your teaching or sensitive reflections on learning, anonymity helps students share their true thoughts without fear of judgment.
This means you might not know exactly who said what, but you’ll likely get more candid information about what clicked or what confusion remains. If you choose to collect responses anonymously, be sure to tell students upfront.
Knowing that they can respond openly (and anonymously) often makes students feel safer to express uncertainties or criticisms, leading to more genuine feedback that you can use to improve your instruction.
Exit Tickets: 30+ Sample Prompts for Reflection and Feedback
Undoubtedly, exit tickets are a powerful tool to help you gather feedback and improve classroom instruction. With educator-focused solutions like ClassPoint, you can now transform exit tickets into a fun and interactive learning experience.
Instead of passively reading slides, students can actively engage with them. Simply integrate ClassPoint into your PowerPoint so you can create dynamic exit tickets using short answers, multiple choice, fill in the blanks, and more.
Let’s explore how these can be applied across different subjects below.
1. Understanding & Comprehension
These exit tickets check whether your students grasped core concepts from the lesson. You may use ClassPoint’s Multiple Choice feature to evaluate their understanding quickly. Simply select this as your question type and adjust the number of answer options as needed.
Check out our full guide on How to Make an Interactive Quiz in PowerPoint with ClassPoint in Less Than 1 Minute (+50 Use Cases!)
- Mathematics: Which of the following is an example of a prime number?
- English: Which literary device was used most in today’s reading?
- Science: What happens during condensation in the water cycle?
- Social Studies: Which event directly led to the American Revolution?
- Bonus: If a friend missed class, how would you explain what they missed?
For more strategies on checking student understanding, check out this summary.
2. Learning Application & Critical Thinking
These prompts encourage your students to apply concepts to real-world scenarios and think critically. With ClassPoint’s Short Answer, you can now collect detailed student responses.
- Mathematics: How can you apply today’s math concept in real life?
- English: How does today’s reading connect to a real-world issue?
- Science: How does what we learned today relate to climate change?
- Social Studies: If you were a leader during this historical event, what would you have done differently?
- Bonus: Did today’s lesson challenge you to think critically about a real-world issue?
For more inspiration, here's a list of 100+ Short Answer Questions Across Bloom’s Taxonomy Levels.
3. Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) Check-In
SEL prompts allow students to express their feelings about learning, participation, and confidence. ClassPoint’s Quick Poll provides you a fast way to gauge their emotions. You may pick from choices including true-false, yes-no-unsure, or Likert scale.
- Mathematics: How confident do you feel about solving today’s problems?
- English: How comfortable were you participating in today’s discussion?
- Science: How interested were you in today’s experiment?
- Social Studies: How well do you understand today’s historical topic?
- Bonus: How was your overall experience with today’s lesson?
For more ideas on SEL check-in questions, explore this guide.
4. Feedback & Classroom Experience
These exit tickets help you adjust instruction by gathering student input. Using ClassPoint’s randomized name picker wheel, you can ensure an equitable participation when discussing feedback with the class. You may also award stars and badges to incentivize correct answers or good behavior.
- Mathematics: What step in today’s problem-solving process was the most challenging?
- English: What did you enjoy most about today’s lesson?
- Science: What’s one question you still have after today’s lab?
- Social Studies: What’s one way the teacher could improve how this topic is taught?
- Bonus: Use the randomized name picker to select a student to share one way today’s class could be improved.
5. Creativity & Expression
These prompts allow students to summarize learning in a creative way. With ClassPoint’s Slide Drawing feature, you can solicit answers in drawing format to visually represent their learning.
- Mathematics: Draw a number line representing today’s concept.
- English: Illustrate a key scene from today’s reading.
- Science: Sketch the process or results of today’s experiment.
- Social Studies: Draw a political cartoon that represents today’s historical topic.
- Bonus: Create a symbol that represents what you learned today.
6. Group Work & Collaboration
These prompts help students reflect on teamwork-related activities. Take advantage of ClassPoint’s Audio Record to allow your students to provide verbal reflections.
- Mathematics: How did your group approach solving today’s problem?
- English: What role did you play in today’s group discussion?
- Science: What did your group do well in today’s lab experiment?
- Social Studies: How did collaborating help you better understand today’s topic?
- Bonus: What is one thing your group could improve for next time?
7. Goal Setting & Future Learning
These exit tickets encourage students to reflect on progress and set learning goals. By utilizing ClassPoint’s Video Upload, your students can share personal reflections in a recorded format.
- Mathematics: Record a video explaining one math concept you want to improve.
- English: Share a personal reading goal for next week.
- Science: Record one question you have about the next topic.
- Social Studies: Explain what historical event or figure you’d like to learn more about.
- Bonus: What’s one thing you’ll do differently next class to improve your learning?
Exit tickets do more than just assess understanding. They bridge the divide between teaching and learning by offering students a chance to reflect, express their thoughts, and reinforce key takeaways, while giving teachers real-time insights to guide instruction.
By keeping them concise, engaging, and purposeful, exit tickets become a seamless part of the learning process, fostering deeper connections and continuous growth in the classroom.
FAQs
What are exit tickets, and why are they important?
Exit tickets are quick, informal assessments given at the end of a lesson to check student understanding, gather feedback, and guide future instruction. They help teachers identify learning gaps and improve engagement.
How do you use exit tickets effectively in the classroom?
To use exit tickets effectively, align them with lesson objectives, keep them concise, offer different response formats (written, verbal, digital), provide feedback, and consider anonymous responses for honest insights.
What are some creative exit ticket ideas for student engagement?
Creative exit ticket ideas include using quick polls, drawings, one-sentence summaries, real-world applications, emoji reflections, and peer-generated quiz questions to make learning more interactive.
Can exit tickets be used for subjects like math, science, and social studies?
Yes! Exit tickets work across all subjects. For math, they can include problem-solving questions. In science, they can check understanding of key concepts, and in social studies, they can encourage historical reflections.
How can technology improve the effectiveness of exit tickets?
Technology streamlines exit tickets by enabling instant responses, diverse question formats, and automated data analysis. It also enhances engagement and accessibility for all learners.
