15 exit ticket questions that tell you what to reteach tomorrow
An exit ticket is one short question students answer alone at the end of a lesson, so you know before tomorrow who understood today. Most of them fail at that for one reason: they ask students how they feel about the lesson instead of asking them to do what the lesson taught.
Below are fifteen exit ticket questions that do the second thing, sorted by what they tell you, each with an example you can use tomorrow. After them: how to read thirty in about five minutes, and how to turn the pile on your desk into the first ten minutes of the next lesson.
What an exit ticket is for
An exit ticket — also called an exit slip or exit pass — is a question or two answered individually in the last few minutes of a lesson and handed in on the way out. It is not a quiz, it is not graded, and it is not a feedback form about your teaching.
It exists to answer one question for you: where does tomorrow’s lesson need to start? A ticket that cannot change that answer, whatever the class writes on it, is not worth setting.
Why it works
Exit tickets are formative assessment at its smallest. In 1998 Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam’s review of classroom assessment, summarised in Inside the Black Box, concluded that improving the everyday assessment teachers do during lessons raises standards. Seven years later, Siobhan Leahy, Christine Lyon, Marnie Thompson and Wiliam described five strategies that make it work day to day; one is engineering questions and tasks that produce evidence of what students have learned. An exit ticket is exactly that, placed at the one moment every lesson has in common: the end.
What the evidence is used for matters as much. The Education Endowment Foundation’s Teaching and Learning Toolkit estimates that good feedback adds about six months’ progress on average — but feedback about the task, not praise. An exit ticket gives you the task evidence; what you do with it the next morning is the feedback.
Barak Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction lists checking for understanding among the habits of the most effective teachers, and puts the most useful success rate during practice at about 80%. That number comes back later as a rule of thumb for deciding when to reteach.
What makes an exit ticket worth reading
- It is about one thing.Today’s single most important idea. Three questions on three ideas produce ninety answers you will not read.
- Students can answer it in two or three minutes, alone and without the board.
- You can read each one in under ten seconds.One answer line, not a paragraph. Wiliam’s standard for a hinge question — about two minutes to answer, about thirty seconds to read the whole room — is the right ambition.
- Its answer changes tomorrow. If every possible result leads to the same lesson, skip it.
- It does not count. No marks, no grade, no names read out.
Did they get it? Five checks
These are the workhorses. Each asks students to do today’s skill once, cold, which is the most direct evidence an exit ticket can give.
1. One problem like today’s, with new numbers
The simplest and most reliable ticket there is: one question of the kind you taught, with different numbers or a different sentence so it cannot be copied from the board.
- Time
- 2–3 minutes
- Prep
- One minute
- Best for
- Any procedure: maths, grammar, balancing equations
Example: “Work out 2/3 + 1/4. Show the step where you make the bottoms the same.” Asking for one named step lets you tell a slip in the arithmetic from a wrong method at a glance.
2. Spot the mistake
Give a worked answer with one error in it, and ask students to find it and put it right. Plant the mistake students actually make, not a random one.
- Time
- 2–3 minutes
- Prep
- Two minutes
- Best for
- Checking the misconception you warned about
Example: “Sam wrote 3/4 + 1/2 = 4/6. What did Sam do wrong, and what is the right answer?” A student who can explain the error understands the rule; a student who agrees with Sam has just told you what to reteach.
3. Multiple choice where every wrong answer means something
One question with four options, each wrong option matching a known misunderstanding. It is the fastest ticket of all to read, because the letter is the diagnosis.
- Time
- 1–2 minutes
- Prep
- Five minutes to write good options
- Best for
- Large classes; ideas with well-known errors
Example: “Which sentence uses a semicolon correctly? A) I like apples; and pears. B) I was tired; I went to bed early. C) She bought; milk, eggs and bread. D) Because it rained; we stayed in.” Every wrong letter is a different mistake, so the not-yet pile sorts itself into groups.
4. True or false — and why
A statement students must judge, with one sentence of reasoning. The reason is what makes it useful: on true or false alone, half the room can be right by guessing.
- Time
- 2 minutes
- Prep
- One minute
- Best for
- Science and history, where misconceptions are common
Example: “Plants get their food from the soil. True or false? Give one reason.” Sort by the reason, not by the word true or false.
5. Which one does not belong?
Four items; students choose the odd one out and say why. There can be more than one defensible answer, which is the point — the justification shows you the understanding.
- Time
- 2–3 minutes
- Prep
- Two minutes
- Best for
- Classifying: numbers, word classes, organisms, sources
Example: “0.5, 1/2, 50%, 0.05. Which does not belong, and why?”A student who picks 0.05 because it is “the only one that is not a half” has it. A student who picks 1/2 because “it is a fraction” has told you something different.
Can they use it? Four transfer questions
Getting today’s example right is not the same as understanding it. These ask students to carry the idea somewhere it has not been yet.
6. Same idea, new setting
Ask students to apply today’s idea to a context you did not use in the lesson.
- Time
- 3 minutes
- Prep
- Two minutes
- Best for
- Ideas that should travel: ratio, cause and effect, persuasive devices
Example: “We used ratios to scale recipes today. A map uses a scale of 1:50,000. How far is 4 cm on the map in real life?”
7. Write the question
Give the answer and ask students to write a question it answers. It tests whether they know what the idea is for, not only what it is called.
- Time
- 2–3 minutes
- Prep
- None
- Best for
- Vocabulary-heavy topics; stretching confident students
Example: “The answer is ‘the Treaty of Versailles’. What is the question?” Keep the best ones: they are ready-made starter questions for next week.
8. Explain it to someone who was absent
“Your friend missed today. In two sentences, tell them the most important thing we learned.” The limit forces a choice, and the choice shows you what students think the lesson was about.
- Time
- 3 minutes
- Prep
- None
- Best for
- Any subject; lessons with one big idea
If most tickets describe the activity (“we did a worksheet about volcanoes”) rather than the idea, the idea did not land — even if the worksheet went well.
9. An example and a non-example
One example of today’s idea and one thing that looks like it but is not. Knowing where a concept stops is a better test than naming it.
- Time
- 3 minutes
- Prep
- None
- Best for
- Definitions: metaphor, prime number, mammal, democracy
Example: “Write one metaphor, and one sentence that compares two things but is not a metaphor.” The second sentence is where the similes turn up.
What do they think they know? Three reflective questions
Self-report on its own is weak evidence: students are poor judges of their own understanding, and in Roediger and Karpicke’s 2006 study the students who had only reread were the more confident and the less able to recall. Paired with a real question, though, it becomes useful.
10. How sure are you? Then one problem
Students rate their confidence from 1 to 4, then answer one question. You get two readings on each ticket and the gap between them.
- Time
- 3 minutes
- Prep
- One minute
- Best for
- Before a test; classes that over- or underestimate themselves
The tickets that matter most are the confident and wrong: those students will not revise it, because they believe they know it. Put them at the top of the not-yet pile.
11. The muddiest point
“What was the least clear part of today’s lesson?” A classic from Angelo and Cross’s Classroom Assessment Techniques, and still one of the quickest ways to find the step you rushed.
- Time
- 1–2 minutes
- Prep
- None
- Best for
- New or difficult material; lessons you suspect ran fast
Look for the same answer on several tickets. One student confused is a conversation; eight confused about the same step is tomorrow’s starter.
12. One question you would ask me
“If you could ask me one question about today, what would it be?” Students who would never put their hand up will write it down.
- Time
- 2 minutes
- Prep
- None
- Best for
- Quiet classes; building trust early in the year
Answer two or three of them at the start of the next lesson, without names. Students learn that the tickets are read, which is what keeps them honest.
Will it last? Three questions that look ahead
Understanding at the end of the lesson is not the same as remembering next week. These questions start the connecting and recalling that keep it.
13. Connect it to last week
“How does today’s lesson connect to what we did last week on …?” Students who can link ideas are building something that will be there later.
- Time
- 3 minutes
- Prep
- None
- Best for
- Units that build: algebra, a period of history, a novel
Example: “How does today’s work on the Treaty of Versailles help explain what we studied last week about German inflation?”
14. Three words, one sentence
Give three key terms from the lesson and ask for one sentence that uses all of them correctly.
- Time
- 2 minutes
- Prep
- None
- Best for
- Vocabulary that has to be used, not just recognised
Example: “Use ‘evaporation’, ‘condensation’ and ‘energy’ in one sentence about the water cycle.”The sentence shows whether the words are connected in the student’s head or only memorised side by side.
15. Write tomorrow’s starter question
“Write one question you think I should ask at the start of the next lesson — with its answer.” Students have to decide what matters and recall it, and you get a stack of questions for a start-of-lesson quiz.
- Time
- 2–3 minutes
- Prep
- None
- Best for
- Any subject; classes used to regular review
Use the best three the next day, or save them for a week later, when recalling them does more good. There are more ways to run that kind of review in our list of twelve retrieval practice activities.
Reading thirty in five minutes
The reason exit tickets get abandoned is not writing them. It is the pile on the desk at 3:30. The fix is to stop marking them.
- Sort, do not mark. Three piles: got it, nearly, not yet. Nearly means the method is right and something small went wrong.
- Read the answer line only. Not the working, not the handwriting, not the doodle in the corner.
- Write nothing on them. Comments on exit tickets are the slowest part and the least read.
- Count the piles and write the three numbers down. A week of those numbers tells you more about a class than any single lesson.
- Look for the pattern in the not-yet pile. Five different mistakes is five conversations. The same mistake five times is a reteach.
Turning the piles into tomorrow
The three numbers point to one of three lessons. None of these rules is exact; they are a starting point you will adjust to your class.
- Most of the class got it— around 80% or more, Rosenshine’s figure for a healthy success rate. Move on. Open with one worked example for the nearly pile, and give the not-yet pile ten minutes with you while everyone else starts the new work.
- A big nearly pile. The idea landed and the execution did not. Start with a spot-the-mistake question on the error you saw most, then carry on.
- A big not-yet pile— more than about a fifth of the class. Reteach the idea to everyone, and teach it differently: a new example, a new representation, a smaller step. The same explanation twice rarely lands the second time.
Whatever the piles say, put the most common wrong answer on the board at the start of the next lesson, without a name, and ask the class what went wrong. It is the most useful two minutes an exit ticket buys.
An exit ticket nobody reads is a worksheet with a shorter name.
Paper, a form, or a quiz tool
The format matters less than the question, but each makes a different part of the job easier.
| Format | Setting it | Reading 30 | What you give up |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paper slips | A photocopy, or the back of a sticky note | About five minutes of sorting by hand | Nothing is kept, so patterns across weeks are hard to see |
| An online form | Every student needs a device, often an account | A spreadsheet of typed answers | Reading free text in cells is slow and hard to sort |
| A quiz tool that marks itself | Written once, reused | Multiple choice sorts itself as students hand in | Needs devices; written answers still need reading |
Paper is still the quickest to set, and it needs no Wi-Fi. A tool starts to pay off when the ticket is multiple choice or true/false and you want the percentage per question, or the same ticket across five classes.
In TeachRoster, which we make, a short quiz can be set as an exit ticket: multiple-choice and true/false answers mark themselves as each student hands in, so every score is there before you have left the room, and ordering the class by score gives you the three piles without touching a slip. Students join with a class code and a four-digit PIN and never make an account, so a ticket on shared Chromebooks does not start with thirty sign-ins. Short written answers still wait for you to read them, with a suggested score you accept or change.
Six exit tickets that tell you nothing
- “Any questions?” Silence is not understanding. It is usually the opposite.
- Thumbs up if you get it. It measures confidence, and confidence is the thing students misjudge most.
- “What did you learn today?” You get the name of the topic back, which you already knew.
- Three questions or more. Ninety answers is an evening, and the ticket that costs an evening is the one that stops being set.
- The worked example still on the board. Clear it before students start, or you are reading copies.
- Collected and never mentioned again. Students notice within a week, and the answers get shorter.
The best exit ticket is the one you will still be setting in March. One question, read in five minutes, used the next morning.
Questions teachers ask
What is an exit ticket?
An exit ticket is one or two short questions students answer on their own in the last few minutes of a lesson, handed in as they leave. It is not graded. Its job is to show the teacher who understood today's key idea, who nearly did, and who did not — so tomorrow's lesson can start in the right place.
How long should an exit ticket take?
Two to three minutes for students to answer, and under ten seconds per ticket for the teacher to read. Dylan Wiliam's rule for hinge questions — about two minutes to answer and about thirty seconds to read the whole room — is a good standard for exit tickets too.
What are good exit ticket questions?
The best ones ask students to do the thing taught today rather than describe how they feel about it: solve one problem like today's with new numbers, find and fix the mistake in a worked answer, pick from multiple-choice options where each wrong answer is a known misconception, or say true or false and give a reason.
Should exit tickets be graded?
No. An exit ticket is formative assessment — it is read for a decision about tomorrow's lesson, not recorded as a mark. Once it counts, students copy from the board or from each other and the ticket stops telling you anything.
How do you use exit ticket data?
Sort the tickets into three piles rather than marking them: got it, nearly, and not yet. Count each pile. The got-it pile moves on, the nearly pile gets one worked example at the start of the next lesson, and the not-yet pile gets about ten minutes with the teacher. If the not-yet pile is large, reteach the idea to the whole class in a different way.
Are exit tickets formative assessment?
Yes. They are one of the simplest forms of formative assessment: evidence of learning gathered during teaching and used to decide what to teach next. They put into practice what Leahy, Lyon, Thompson and Wiliam (2005) call engineering tasks that elicit evidence of learning.
Can exit tickets be digital?
Yes, and for multiple-choice or true/false questions a quiz tool that marks answers automatically will sort the class for you as students hand in. Paper is still quicker to set up and needs no devices. Free-text answers need reading either way.
Sources
- Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998). Inside the black box: Raising standards through classroom assessment. Phi Delta Kappan, 80(2), 139–148.
- Leahy, S., Lyon, C., Thompson, M., & Wiliam, D. (2005). Classroom assessment: Minute by minute, day by day. Educational Leadership, 63(3), 18–24.
- Wiliam, D. (2015). Designing great hinge questions. Educational Leadership, September 2015.
- Education Endowment Foundation. Teaching and Learning Toolkit: Feedback.
- Rosenshine, B. (2012). Principles of instruction: Research-based strategies that all teachers should know. American Educator, 36(1), 12–19, 39.
- Roediger, H. L., & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-enhanced learning: Taking memory tests improves long-term retention. Psychological Science, 17(3), 249–255.