Exit tickets are often seen as a standard end-of-lesson routine, but are they actually effective? Students respond to a prompt or question on paper, via a digital device or a mini whiteboard. The responses from students provide the teacher with immediate insight into what they’ve grasped and what requires further support. They provide a snapshot of performance that informs the next instructional steps. They may include a range of questions that can be answered in a short amount of time, or they can be used to answer one key question with an extended answer.

Exit tickets are not without their critics. Here are some valid points to be aware of:

Checking at the end of a lesson is too late.

This is correct; checking for understanding should take place early and often. An exit ticket should not be used as the first or only opportunity to do this.

Exit tickets measure performance, not learning.

Again, this is correct (unless the questions included on the exit ticket provide an opportunity for retrieval practice). You can read more about the distinction between performance and learning here. Professors Robert Bjork and Nicholas Soderstrom (2015) write,

“During the instruction or training process, what we can observe and measure is performance, which is often an unreliable index of whether the relatively long-term changes that constitute learning have taken place.”

Therefore, teachers need to be aware of this with any task and question design.

“It’s too late to help learners!”

Another valid point. If a class completes an exit ticket and just as they have written their responses, the bell goes, students could leave with misconceptions and mistakes that have not been corrected and can only be addressed in the next lesson. Teachers must leave sufficient time for feedback and ensure learners act on it.

Below are three practical tips to help ensure they are effective and efficient.

1.Question design aligned with curriculum content

The questions on an exit ticket should be carefully considered and communicated. If they are based on the curriculum content within the lesson, there should be an explicit link to learning outcomes or intentions. Clear, specific questions can target core curriculum knowledge, in contrast to vague exit tickets that ask students to write down three non-specified facts from the lesson. How can a teacher provide feedback when all responses generated could be completely different? A teacher cannot be frustrated if students didn’t write down X on their exit ticket when they weren’t specifically asked to do so.

2. Use Exit Tickets to support Formative Assessment 

Formative assessment should be frequent and low stakes; an exit ticket is a great example of this. A key difference between a formative and summative assessment task is what the teacher does with the evidence generated. Summative assessment grades can be formally recorded, analysed and shared with students and parents. Formative assessment, in contrast, elicits evidence of learning to help guide the next steps in the learning process. The exit ticket can help the teacher decide if the class can move on next lesson, or not yet. Formative assessment and adaptive teaching encourage teachers to follow the learning, not the lesson plan.

3. Recycle Exit Tickets

I originally wrote about this idea with Teach Like a Champion 3.0 (2021), author Doug Lemov. Recycling an exit ticket and using it later enables it to become an entrance ticket for a ‘Do Now’ or starter task. Students answer the same questions (or a variation/rephrased question), but some time has passed. No notes are allowed, and the exit ticket has transformed from a checking for understanding task to an opportunity for retrieval practice. Lemov and I offered this advice to teachers,

“Another idea is to have students compare their responses from the exit and entrance tickets; do the answers vary or differ in terms of accuracy or depth? This can further illustrate the impact of forgetting on learning. The additional benefit of using exit tickets as entrance tickets is the workload implications for teachers by reusing the same resource with their classes. A carefully designed exit ticket can be used at different points in the learning process, checking for understanding (performance) and later allowing an opportunity for recall (learning).”

Exit tickets can be effective. The impact depends entirely on how they are designed, timed, and used by the teacher and student. They are only as useful as the action it prompts. For school leaders, the key question is not “Are teachers using exit tickets?” but “How are they using the evidence they generate?”

If you’re looking to build this into your daily routine, the Great Teaching Toolkit offers a structured breakdown of this technique, alongside a suite of resources designed to help you track and improve your classroom impact.

References:

Robert A. Bjork and Nicholas C. Soderstrom (2015) Learning Versus Performance: An Integrative Review Nicholas C. Soderstrom and Robert A. Bjork Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles.

Jones, K. (2021) Exit tickets, performance & long-term learning. Teach Like a Champion, 23 September. Available at: https://teachlikeachampion.org/blog/kate-jones-exit-tickets-performance-long-term-learning/

Jones, K. (2023) The distinction between performance and learning. Evidence Based Education, 22 August. Available at: https://evidencebased.education/resource/the-distinction-between-performance-and-learning/