Exit Tickets: A Quick, End of Class Formative Assessment

Having routines at the beginning and end of class is key. I use warm ups (also known as bell ringers or do nows) at the start of class and exit tickets (also known as closings) to wrap up the period.

Warm ups are a way to get students engaged in learning from the moment they enter the class room and give you, the teacher, a few minutes to get things ready for the day's main lesson or activity. Exit tickets help you to plan and adjust the next day's lesson.

Right now my warm ups and exit tickets focus on our vocabulary units. I usually pre-make a PowerPoint of one or two weeks worth of warm ups and exit tickets at a time. I can easily flip back and forth between the slides for that day's warm up and exit ticket as one class exits and a new class enters.

But sometimes what I planned for the exit ticket doesn't work because the class didn't quite finish a lesson, we ended up working on a different skill, etc.

For those instances  I created these four standardized exit tickets that can be used with any lesson in any subject area. Sometimes I use one of the four and other times I let the students select one of the four to which to respond.


I printed, laminated, and hung these four standard exit tickets above my whiteboard so that even if there is just one minute left in class, I can point to one of the four and ask students to complete it before leaving class. I also have these saved as a PowerPoint so I can display one or the set of four on my SmartBoard.

All four choices are intentionally very short because keeping track of time during lessons is one of my weaknesses.

However, the short length also allows me to quickly read through student responses to see who's got it and who doesn't. I stand at the door as my students exit to collect their exit tickets and then once my next class is seated and working on their warm ups, I can look through the exit tickets from the previous class.

I usually sort out the who's got it and who doesn't and immediately recycle the ones for the students who understand. For the students who struggled, I hold onto those exit tickets and know that those are students I need to check in with during the next day's class or perhaps pull for a small group lesson.

While occasionally I will make and print exit tickets with a specific format, I usually just use squares of recycled paper. I save any paper that's only used on one side and collect all the one-sided copies left behind in the copy room.

Once I have acquired a nice size stack, I use the paper cutter at school to cut the paper into four and use those squares as exit tickets. I keep stacks of the squares contained in the basket near the door so I can easily hand them out or have a student helper do so.

I love using exit tickets as a quick informal assessment at the end of class, but can't imagine using fresh paper to create something that will only be used once. For your own set of these standardized exit tickets, click here.