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How to Write an Exit Ticket Worth Two Minutes
Heshan Fernando
Co-founder & COO
“What did you learn today?” is the most common exit ticket question and one of the least useful. Thirty students write a version of the lesson objective back at you, and you learn that they were paying attention.
Attention is not understanding, and an exit ticket that cannot tell them apart is two minutes of a lesson spent confirming something you already knew.
A good question makes a wrong answer informative
The test for an exit ticket question: if a student gets it wrong, do you know something you did not know before?
“What is 3/4 + 1/6?” produces a right or wrong answer and tells you which students can do it. Useful.
“Amir says 3/4 + 1/6 = 4/10. What has he done, and what would you tell him?” produces answers that reveal how a student is thinking. A student who spots the error but cannot explain it is in a different position from one who agrees with Amir, and both are visible.
The second type is harder to write and worth considerably more, because a lesson plan responds to the reason for an error rather than its existence.
| Question type | Wrong answer tells you |
|---|---|
| “What did we learn?” | Nothing |
| Recall of a fact | They did not remember |
| Straight application | They cannot do it |
| Spot the error | How they are thinking |
| Explain to someone | Where the reasoning breaks |
Two minutes, not ten
An exit ticket is a check, not an assessment. Its whole justification is that it costs a small fraction of the lesson and shapes the next one.
At two to three minutes, one or two questions. At ten minutes it has become a test, it eats teaching time, and it produces more than you will read carefully across five classes.
The constraint is also a discipline. Being limited to two questions forces you to pick the two that matter, which is a better use of thought than writing six.
Sort into three piles
The output has to change something, or the exercise is data collection.
The fastest usable method is three piles:
Got it. Reasoning is sound. These students need the next thing.
Partly. The idea is there with a gap or a specific error. This pile determines tomorrow’s opening.
Not yet. The underlying concept has not landed. These students need something different from a repeat of today.
Sorting thirty responses this way takes about five minutes. The middle pile is the one that matters — a repeat of the lesson does not help them, and moving on leaves them behind, so the opening of the next lesson addresses their specific error.
Anonymous or named
A decision that changes what you get back.
Named responses let you follow up with specific students, which is the point if the exit ticket informs who gets support tomorrow. Students also take a named response more seriously.
Anonymous responses get more honesty about confusion. A student who does not want to be the one who did not understand will write something plausible on a named ticket and admit the gap on an anonymous one.
The practical compromise many teachers use: named for the content question, with an optional anonymous line for anything the student wants to raise. That preserves the follow-up and gives the reluctant student somewhere to say so.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Asking what students learned, which measures attention.
- Questions answerable by copying from the board.
- Making it long enough to become an assessment.
- Reading the responses and changing nothing.
- Using it every lesson until students write the minimum to be released, which is the point at which it stops working.
How to do it with Exit Ticket Generator
The Exit Ticket Generator writes misconception-focused questions.
- Enter the lesson’s specific objective rather than the topic.
- Choose misconception-style questions where you can.
- Keep it to one or two questions and two to three minutes.
- Sort the responses into three piles and plan tomorrow’s opening from the middle one.
Other classroom tools are in the tools directory.
Frequently asked questions
What makes a good exit ticket question?
One where a wrong answer is informative. A question students answer by recalling the last five minutes confirms attention; a question targeting a known misconception shows how they are thinking.
How long should it take?
Two to three minutes. It is a check rather than an assessment, and the value is in reading thirty responses quickly to decide what the next lesson opens with.
What do I do with the responses?
Sort into got it, partly and not yet, then plan from the middle pile. Reading them without changing anything is the most common failure.
Final thought
Write the question so that being wrong is informative. Anything else measures whether students were listening, which you could already tell.