Exit Ticket

The steps

1. Write the ticket when you plan the lesson, not at 2:55. Ask yourself what students must be able to do by the end. One recall question, one application question, and optionally:
   What's one thing you're still unsure about?
   If you cannot write the ticket, the lesson does not yet know where it is going.
2. Keep the format fixed and small. Slips, the back page, or a corner of the book. Same ritual daily. Five minutes, silent, names on. Tell them why:
   This one's for me, not for marks — it tells me what to teach tomorrow.
3. Collect at the door. Make it part of your exit routine (Strong Finish): tickets into your hand or the tray on the way out.
4. Sort, don't mark. Three piles in five minutes: got it, nearly, not yet. No grades, no ticks, no comments. The ticket is a thermometer, not an assignment.
5. Let tomorrow answer it, visibly. Open with the pattern:
   Two-thirds of us nailed the method, but half dropped the units — watch the first example.
   Reteach when the not yet pile is the majority; see the small group when it is a few.
6. Keep the loop visible. Students need to see their tickets steering the lessons. That visibility is what keeps their answers honest and their effort real.

How you’ll know it’s working

• The ticket exists at planning time. Ask to see it before the lesson, not after.
• The last five minutes are silent and independent, and collection is part of the exit routine.
• The teacher can say, next morning and from memory, what the three piles were.
• Tomorrow's lesson visibly opens from the tickets, and students hear it doing so.

Weigh it up

Why it’s worth it

• You find the misconception the day it forms, not a week later in a book pile. Thirty small pieces of evidence replace the nod, while there is still time to act on them.
• Marking load falls. Sorting into three piles takes minutes where marking takes hours, and it changes tomorrow's teaching where marking often changes nothing.
• Tomorrow's plan half-writes itself: the piles tell you whether to reteach, tweak, or move on, and yesterday's ticket becomes today's Do Now.
• Students see their answers steering the lessons, and honesty starts to feel worthwhile. "I don't get it" becomes useful information to give, which is its own culture shift.
• Endings stop fizzling. The last five minutes get a silent, purposeful routine instead of a drift towards the bell.

The costs

• It taxes the day twice: five lesson-minutes that could have been practice, and a nightly sorting habit that is light per class but compounds across a timetable — five groups is 150 slips a day. Sane versions exist: rotate two focus classes daily, or ticket every lesson and sort deeply twice a week.
• The data invites overreaction. One scrappy ticket after a hot afternoon is noise, and replanning everything nightly is the fast route to abandoning the routine.