The humble exit ticket is one of the highest-impact, lowest-effort routines in teaching. Five quick questions at the end of a lesson tell you what actually landed — before your class walks out the door and forgets half of it. Here is how to run one every single day in under three minutes, and what to do with the answers.
What is an exit ticket?
An exit ticket is a short check for understanding that students complete at the end of a lesson. It is not a test and it is not graded for marks. Its only job is to give you — and the child — a quick, honest snapshot of whether the day's key idea stuck.
The format is deliberately small: a handful of questions tied to the single most important thing you taught that day. Because it is quick, you can run it daily, and daily is where the value is. One exit ticket tells you about one lesson; a term of exit tickets tells you about a child.
Why five questions is the sweet spot
One question is too noisy — a child can guess it right or slip on it wrong, and you learn little. Ten questions turn a three-minute routine into a mini-exam that eats your lesson and stresses young learners. Five multiple-choice questions is the practical middle: enough to separate "got it" from "got lucky," short enough to finish before the bell, and easy enough to mark at a glance.
Keep every question tied to today. Resist the urge to sneak in last week's material — that is what a weekly review is for. The exit ticket answers one question: did today's lesson work?
How to run one in three minutes
- Write the questions while you plan the lesson. If you know your learning objective, you already know your five questions. Draft them before you teach, not after.
- Signal the routine. The last three minutes are exit-ticket time, every day. Predictability is what makes it a habit rather than an interruption.
- Let children answer independently. No conferring — you want each child's own understanding, not the loudest voice in the group.
- Scan the results immediately. A question everyone got right needs no action. A question half the class missed is tomorrow's starter.
The three-minute ruleIf your exit ticket regularly takes longer than three minutes, it is too long. Cut questions, not corners.
What to actually do with the answers
Collecting data you never look at is worse than collecting none — it costs time and changes nothing. The point of an exit ticket is the decision it drives the next morning:
- Green (most of the class correct): move on. Reteaching what they already know wastes everyone's time.
- Amber (a mixed spread): open tomorrow with a two-minute recap and a worked example before you build further.
- Red (most of the class wrong): the lesson did not land. Reteach it a different way — the misconception is usually in how you explained it, not in the children.
Looking at the answer spread per question is more useful than a single score. It points you at the exact idea that slipped, so you reteach the right thing rather than the whole lesson. This is formative assessment in its simplest, most repeatable form.
Common exit-ticket mistakes
- Grading them. The moment marks are attached, children optimise for the mark and stop being honest. Keep exit tickets low-stakes.
- Making them too hard. You are checking today's core idea, not stretching your strongest students. Save challenge for other tasks.
- Collecting and never reviewing. If you will not look at the answers before you plan tomorrow, do not run the ticket.
- Doing it only occasionally. The insight compounds with consistency. A daily rhythm beats an intense week followed by nothing.
Turn it into a daily habit kids look forward to
The hardest part of exit tickets is not writing them — it is keeping the routine alive for a whole term without it feeling like a chore for you or the children. That is exactly the problem Brainling is built to solve. You write five multiple-choice questions on the day's lesson and publish; each child answers on their own private link, and every correct answer feeds a little pet called Pip that grows as they keep learning. The routine sticks because the children want to come back, and you get the per-question answer spread automatically. Pair it with a look at why daily practice beats cramming and you have a rhythm that works for the whole year.