Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Exit Slips

For several years, I've wanted to do exit slips, but I just never could get it organized to my liking. I understand the benefit of them and can see them being an awesome thing in my classroom.

Enter in some discussions with my bestie, @approx_normal... she does her warmups on index cards and then hands them back for the students do to the exit question on the back and put it in a box by the door. But, like @approx_normal, I also suck at closures and often run out of time....

So today, while she and I are discussing some ideas for the spring semester, I get a brainstorm.... What if I made a poster of generic exit-questions and posted it in my classroom? For example...

1. Summarize the important points of today's lesson

2. Write 3 things you learned, 2 things you are fuzzy on, and 1 question you still have.

3. Etc

Then, at the end of the hour, I could just direct student's attention to the poster and tell them to write their response to question number ___ and put their index card in the box as they leave the room.

I need more exit ticket prompts though.... Ideas? :)

5 comments:

Tina Cardone said...

I do this in the form of journals that I collect on Fridays only. Kids remind me that the last 5 minutes are journal time, and they always start by writing what they learned. The second question I ask changes but I use some basics: compare/contrast concepts we've learned, compare math vocab to 'regular English', predict, write something in your own words etc. I always put the journal question up before class so at the end of class I just remind kids to write (or sometimes they remind me).

miss.calcul8 said...

I totally thought about doing this in the form of a giant bingo card and then having a cool Bingo wheel that would spit out the number and have a kid do it each day. Wouldn't they love that!

Here are some exit slip links:

http://www.box.com/s/4dbx72qugufhxt1rom4u

http://www.aea267.k12.ia.us/literacyexcellence/files/AEA267ExitSlipPrompts.pdf

http://www.gips.org/assets/files/Learning/CheckingForUnderstanding/Exit_Slip.pdf

http://datadeb.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/exit-slips-wahlstrom1.pdf

Anonymous said...

How about... draw a diagram that shows what we did today? Or what you improved today? Or something like that.

Matt Townsley said...

I know of some teachers who ask somewhat open-ended questions to gauge students' conceptual understanding. For example, "Today in class, we learned how to divide fractions. Describe in your own words how to do this? Why does it work?"

Another example:
"In a hypothesis test, how do you what to write for the null hypothesis? Give an example."

The idea in my mind behind exit slips: solicit student responses that will help plan for instruction the next day. The responses should confirm common student misconceptions, confirm student understanding or something in between..

BK said...

I like the 3-2-1 exit slip.

Also, I always start class with a warm-up and an objective. At the end of the hour, I have them tell how they met the objective.

I think it's critical to remember that an exit slip is simply feedback. That feedback might just be a number on a card or simply raising their hand and showing the number of fingers that corresponds to their understanding.

Exit slips don't have to be super formal all the time.