An exit ticket is a short question or task that students complete at the end of a lesson, on a slip of paper or a device, before they leave. It takes two to five minutes and gives you something a show of hands cannot: evidence from every student about what they understood today.
Exit tickets are a form of formative assessment, which means assessment used to adjust teaching rather than to grade. Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam's influential 1998 review, Inside the Black Box, argued that this kind of feedback loop is one of the most effective ways to raise achievement. The key is using what you learn from it.
Ten formats
- One question, one answer. A single problem or question on today's key idea. Simple and fast to sort.
- 3-2-1. Three things you learned, two questions you still have, one thing you found interesting.
- Muddiest point. "What was the least clear part of today's lesson?" Great for planning the next warm-up.
- Two multiple-choice questions. One on today's lesson and one on last week's. Quick to check, and it doubles as spaced retrieval.
- Explain it to a younger student. Students write two or three sentences explaining the idea in plain words. Misconceptions show up quickly.
- Spot the mistake. Show a worked example with one error. Students find it and fix it.
- True or false, and why. A statement that sounds right but is not, or the reverse. The "why" is where the understanding shows.
- Headline. Summarize today's lesson as a newspaper headline of eight words or fewer.
- Connect it. "How does today's idea connect to what we learned about X?" Good for building links between units.
- Confidence plus proof. Students rate their confidence from 1 to 4, then answer one question. Comparing the two shows who is overconfident and who knows more than they think.
Examples by subject
The best exit tickets ask about the one idea that matters most in the lesson. A few examples:
- Math: "Solve 3(x − 4) = 18. Then write one sentence explaining your first step."
- English: "Here is a sentence from today's text. What does it tell us about the narrator that the narrator does not say directly?"
- Science: "A student says heavier objects always fall faster. Do you agree? Use today's experiment in your answer."
- History: "Name one cause of the event we studied today and explain how it led to the next step."
- World languages: "Translate these three short phrases, then write one new sentence using today's verb."
Notice that each one asks students to produce something, not just pick or rate. That is where the useful information is.
Paper or screen?
Paper slips are fast, need no devices and are easy to sort into piles by hand. Digital exit tickets are easier to keep and compare over time, and multiple-choice ones can be checked automatically. Many teachers use paper for open questions and a quick digital quiz for multiple choice. Pick whichever you will actually look at before the next lesson.
Sort in minutes, not hours
Exit tickets only help if you look at them before the next lesson, so keep the sorting simple. Make three piles:
- Got it: ready to move on.
- Almost: small errors or gaps.
- Not yet: a misconception, or no real answer.
You are not grading; you are looking for patterns. If half the class is in "not yet", reteach tomorrow in a different way. If a few students are, plan a small group or pair them with someone from the first pile.
Use them to open the next lesson
The most useful move is to start the next class with the results: "Many of you said X. Here is why it's actually Y." Students see that their answers mattered, and the correction happens while the idea is still fresh.
Tips that keep exit tickets working
- Keep them ungraded or worth very little, so students answer honestly.
- Ask for recall, not just feelings. "How well did you understand today?" tells you less than one real question.
- Vary the format so they do not become automatic.
- Keep a small bank of ready-made questions for each unit, so you are not writing them late at night.
For that last point, a question generator saves time. Paste your lesson notes into Quizbot's AI question generator, ask for a handful of multiple-choice or true/false questions, and keep the ones that target the misconceptions you care about. Print them, or put them on the board at the end of the lesson.
