Exit Ticket Tools and 15 Questions
Conducting an exit ticket activity at the end of a class is one of my favorite ways to get some additional insight into how my students feel about topic, that day’s lesson, or just their general state of mind. Over the years I’ve conducted exit ticket activities on scraps of paper and through a variety of digital tools including blog post comments, Padlet notes, Flipgrid videos, and Kahoot games.
Strategy and Questions List
Whether an exit ticket is conducted with digital tools or on scraps of paper (a strategy I abandoned years ago because I always seemed to misplaced a paper or two), strategy is the same. I try to ask questions that aren’t “yes/ no” but can still be answered by all students in just a minute or two. To that end, here’s a list of general purpose exit ticket questions that I developed and have used at various times in my career.
1. What’s a new-to-you word or term you heard today?
2. What’s one thing you’d change about today’s lesson?
3. How did today’s lesson make you feel?
4. How well do you think you’d do if we had a quiz next week?
5. How would you describe today’s lesson to a classmate who was absent?
6. What was your favorite part of today’s lesson?
7. What surprised you about today’s class?
8. What’s something you wish was different in class?
9. What’s one question you’d put on a quiz about today’s lesson?
10. How would you help a classmate who didn’t understand today’s lesson?
11. What’s one thing you’d like to learn more about?
12. What was the easiest part of today’s class?
13. How did today’s lesson fit with the one before it?
14. What do you think the next lesson will be about?
15. What was the hardest part of today’s class?
Tools for Conducting Digital Exit Ticket Activities
As I mentioned above, over the years I’ve used a variety of digital platforms to conduct exit ticket activities. The choice I make depends on the classroom environment, the students, and time constraints.
If I want to conduct an exit ticket activity that is text-based, meaning that students just write reponses, then I’ll use Padlet or Ziplet. On Padlet I’ll create a digital canvas to which students add their text notes. In Ziplet you can create an online classroom in which students write reponses to questions or respond with emojis. Ziplet can also be integrated with Google Classroom. Here’s an overview of Padlet and here’s one of Ziplet.
If I want my students to respond to an exit ticket question with a video or audio response then I’ll use Flipgrid or Synth. One downside to using one of those tools for exit tickets is that the recording quality can suffer if everyone is in the same room recording at the same time. There’s also the potential for students to not want to participate because they don’t like how they look or sound in their recordings. Here’s an overview of how to use Flipgrid and here’s one of how to use Synth.
Finally, if you’re using Google Slides or PowerPoint in your lesson, you could just ask a poll question at the end of the lesson and generate a word cloud of responses. I’ve done this in the past by using an add-on called Sli.do. Here’s my demo of how it works in Google Slides.
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