Exit Tickets: Do They Enhance Formative Assessment
If you’re like most teachers, you’ve probably asked yourself this question: "Did my students get that?" after you have finished teaching a lesson. Exit tickets or exit slips in case you’re not familiar, are simple, short, end-of-class reflections or questions you hand out to students. These are quick activities completed by students at the end of a class to provide feedback on their understanding of the lesson. They help teachers gauge students' grasp of the material and plan subsequent lessons accordingly.
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What Are Exit Tickets and How Do They Work?
Exit tickets are usually just one or two questions. And the beauty is that it doesn't require much effort to create. An exit ticket could be as simple as asking, "What was the most confusing part of today’s lesson?".
For science classes, where lessons can get pretty technical, exit tickets can be tailored to fit specific learning objectives. For example, after a lesson on the water cycle, you might ask, "What is one thing you learned about evaporation today?" or, "Rate your understanding of the water cycle on a scale of 1 to 5." These little prompts help you see what your students understood and where they might still be struggling.
One thing that’s great about exit tickets is their flexibility. You can use them to review the day's lesson, check for misconceptions, or even gather feedback on your teaching methods. They can be done both on paper and through digital platforms, which is perfect if you want to keep everything organized in one place.
Exit Tickets as a form of Formative Assessment
The goal of formative assessment is to monitor student learning to provide ongoing feedback that can be used by instructors to improve their teaching and by students to improve their learning.
Imagine you’ve just wrapped up a lesson on chemical reactions, and you hand out an exit ticket with a question like, “What is the difference between an endothermic and exothermic reaction?” You collect those responses and realize that half of the class thinks that both types of reactions release heat. Oops! But the good news is that you’ve caught this misunderstanding early, before a quiz or test. Now, you can spend a bit of time the next day clarifying the concept before moving on. A study conducted in a high school science class found that implementing exit tickets led to a 16.1% increase in student engagement and a 7.6% improvement in quiz scores (Mastromonaco 2015). Another study by Basco looked at how using exit slips affects science achievement in middle school students. The study concluded that exit slips can greatly boost students' performance when teachers use the feedback to help them with areas they struggle in. (Basco 2021)
Tips for Using Exit Tickets in Your Class
Ask Specific Questions: The best exit tickets ask clear and targeted questions. In science, that means focusing on a key concept or learning objective from the day’s lesson. For instance, after a lesson on ecosystems, you might ask, “What is one-way energy is transferred in a food chain?” This helps you see if students understood a core idea, instead of getting vague feedback like, “Today’s class was fine.”
Another strategy is using “What if” questions that test application, like “What would happen to the food web if all the primary producers disappeared?” These questions push students to apply their knowledge and reveal how well they can connect the dots.
Use the Feedback: The most important part of using exit tickets is to actually use the feedback! Take a few minutes after class to review the responses and look for common themes or misconceptions. Don’t be afraid to share the feedback with students, too. Something like, “I noticed that many of you had questions about how DNA replication works, so let’s go over that again,” can show students that their input matters.
Keep It Low-Stakes: Exit tickets should be stress-free for students. It’s not a test or a quiz—it’s more like a quick reflection. The goal is for both you and them to see what they’ve grasped and what they need more help with. This keeps students from feeling anxious about sharing what they don’t understand, making the feedback more honest and useful.
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References
Mastromonaco, A. (2015). Exit Tickets' Effect on Engagement and Concept Attainment in High School Science.
Basco, R. O. (2021). Exit Slips As Predictor of Academic Performance. Journal of Education, Management and Development Studies
Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (2009). Developing the theory of formative assessment. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, 21(1), 5-31.
Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2015). Checking for Understanding: Formative Assessment Techniques for Your Classroom. ASCD.
Hattie, J. (2017). Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement. Routledge.
Heritage, M. (2010). Formative assessment: Making it happen in the classroom. Corwin Press.
Marzano, R. J. (2012). The Art and Science of Teaching: A Comprehensive Framework for Effective Instruction. ASCD.
Sadler, D. R. (2010). Beyond feedback: Developing student capability in complex appraisal. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 35(5), 535-550.