Entrance and Exit Tickets Teaching Strategy

Entrance and exit tickets are a fantastic way to get the status of your class quickly. No one has time to create and give a quiz or a test every day to check their students’ understanding.

This strategy is also known as bellwork, but this takes bellwork and gives it a clear purpose. It helps students get focused as soon as they enter/exit the classroom because they have an immediate task to complete.

This blog post contains affiliate links that are of no cost to the reader. If you make a purchase through the provided links, this blog will receive a small commission to help with the financial costs of maintaining the site.

How Does This Strategy Work?

Entrance and exit tickets work either when students enter the classroom (Entrance Tickets) or a few minutes before the end of class (Exit Tickets). Give students a question (or two) that they must answer. You might have these preprinted on small sheets of paper, written on the board, or in some other easily accessible form. Other options: sticky notes, paper with one side still good or in a notebook all work.
Students are asked to immediately respond to the question(s) in the manner you specify.
Students have a set amount of time to complete the work. No more than 5 minutes. They are finished either when you collect tickets and begin instruction (Entrance Tickets) or when the bell rings and they leave (Exit Tickets).

How Do I Use This Strategy?

Ask the students to think. What do they already know or understand? What do they remember from the day (week, month, year) before? What do they want to know? Can they successfully apply what they learned? Where do they struggle?
Have students reflect on their daily independent reading and practice reading strategies or grammar lessons they have previously learned.
This is a great place for journal questions! Use traditional, introspective questions or have students begin to keep a grammar/poetry/writing/etc. journal.
Use them daily! Get your students in the habit of knowing that this is how class begins/ends. This way, you don’t even have to tell students to get to work–they know where and when to look for these.

Why Do I Love This Strategy?

I love the entrance and exit tickets strategy because students are focused from the moment they enter the classroom (or until the moment the final bell rings). You don’t lose those few minutes every day–which do add up. Consider this – 2 minutes each day x 180 school days per year = 6 hours of lost time over the year!
Admit Tickets: Admit and exit tickets are an easy way to bridge between yesterday’s lesson and today’s, transition to or preview a new topic, judge prior knowledge, or check for understanding of last night’s homework.
Exit Tickets: These are a great way to do a quick review and check comprehension of and ability to apply the day’s lesson, provide feedback on the material covered in class, and ask extension questions related to the day’s learning.

Digital Entrance and Exit Tickets

You can also have students complete digital entrance and exit tickets. I would use Google Forms and set it up with a QR code so students could scan it with their phones as they enter/exit your classroom. You could also set up your entrance and exit tickets on Google Drawings (with a pretend sticky note template), Google Jamboard, Padlet, Flipgrid, Google Docs, Google Classroom Question or any other digital system that allows students to respond quickly.

Reminder: These entrance and exit tickets are meant to be quick checks, not full quizzes or tests. Review your students’ answers daily to ensure these don’t just become one more thing to mark. Try entrance and exit tickets with your students.

Use entrance and exit tickets with your students to get a quick understanding of where they are currently at in their learning.

Try Feedback Frames

Another way to use entrance and exit tickets in your classroom is with Feedback Frames. This reusable tool allows teachers to quickly gather the status of the class.

Do you enjoy seeing your students engaged but feel frustrated by the challenges of managing technology in the classroom?

Discover Feedback Frames – a hands-on tool that lets students give feedback, answer questions, and engage in class activities without the use of digital devices. This approach allows teachers to quickly assess the class’s understanding without needing to rely on phones, tablets, or computers.

Here’s how it works: Teachers pose a question using the frame, and each student uses a token to select one of six possible answers. The frame’s design keeps responses hidden, ensuring that students can’t see what their peers have chosen. It’s a modern alternative to chart paper and tally marks, offering a way to get individual and honest feedback. Feedback Frames provide teachers with a visualized chart of stacked tokens.

Plus, with signature tracking sheets, teachers can easily monitor which students participated in each frame.

Watch this video that shares “What do teachers think of Feedback Frames?”

Feedback Frames are great for:

Student Voice
Student Collaboration
Entrance and Exit Tickets
Quick Check-In
Status of the Class
Attendance Questions
Voting

Check out this short video on how Feedback Frames can be used as a group discussion and decision-making tool.

At the time of writing Feedback Frame is available in boxes of 8. This tool would be a great option to show your school administration and request they purchase a set for the school. You could also team up with your teacher bestie to split the cost of the box and each of you get four frames.

Ready to buy? Use my affiliate link to get a 30% discount. This link should have my discount code automatically embedded in it. If the discount does not automatically show up you can use the code: 2PEASANDADOG to get the discount. Feedback Frames is a Canadian company.