Digitize your exit tickets!
Erin Dye
2014-09-20
Is your administration pushing the use of exit tickets at your school? Even if they’re not, it’s something to consider. Running formative assessment during class requires preparation, management, and participation. But as with most things, having an easy daily routine can be a good way to work through some of those issues.
- Find a web-based assessment resource that will export the data from your students’ answers into an Excel chart or some other useful format. Daily formative assessment is likely to fail if you are still the one stuck grading 30+ individual answers. If you’re in a 1:1 classroom, or if you have access to the computer lab, I’d recommend Kahoot. The great thing about this resource is that it somehow manages to be engaging and fun for every grade level. And it really is fun—try it with your colleagues at your next staff meeting and watch a room full of adults light up.
- You can also use Socrative to issue short quizzes. This service also allows you to export data. Socrative takes just a few more minutes to set up than Kahoot does, but it offers a wider range of answering options (i.e. more than just multiple choice). Socrative even has templates and sample exit ticket questions already available for you to use.
- If you have clickers (student response devices), you can plug a few questions into the clicker software each day and have your students follow the normal classroom procedures for using the clickers to answer. That data is stored in an exportable format too.
- If you’re in a low-tech classroom, you can still have quizzes that are auto-graded. For instance, Mastery Connect—those guys who make the super-useful Common Core app—have a resource called the Bubble Sheet Scanner. Your students fill out a paper multiple-choice answer sheet. Then you hold their completed papers up to your computer’s camera, scan the papers, or download a free app for your iPad, and the software will automatically grade each quiz. Then all the data is still exportable to your grade book.
Give exit tickets a try to figure out where your students understand the curriculum and where they may be falling behind. It will help you intervene and remediate before it’s too late.