By Stephen Tarbuck
How I heard about Exit Tickets
In 2025, I attended the Compass Class! teacher training workshop run by National Geographic Learning. It was an excellent workshop but what particularly stood out was the strip of paper we were given at the end.
On this strip of paper were questions connected to the content of the workshop and prompts to help us reflect on our takeaways.
It was then that I completed my first Exit Ticket.
As I completed it, I thought: what a wonderful idea! This paper, whatever it’s called, could work with my students and help them to become more reflective and more autonomous – and would help to extend the lesson out of the classroom by giving the students something to think about as our time together drew to a close.
Not long after that workshop, I started experimenting with many different models of Exit Tickets. They have now become a standard part of my lessons.
The Nature of Exit Tickets
What do you know about Exit Tickets? Choose the option that suits you best.
- I know a lot about them.
- I know a little about them.
- I have never heard of them.
What did you decide was closest to your experience? That’s interesting! But what’s more interesting is the question of what was the point of doing that? Simple: that was your introduction to the idea of an Exit Ticket.
Your answer would tell me a lot about your knowledge of the subject, and would shape what followed in my lesson, workshop, seminar, or what-have-you.
Now, strictly speaking, I would call what you have done an Entry Ticket. However, the idea remains the same as an Exit Ticket – it’s another self-reflective method of feedback that consists of a series of prompting questions, but Entry Tickets come at the start of the lesson, while Exit Tickets appear at the end.
Exit Tickets serve multiple purposes, but the big idea on the student side is to make the student reflect on their learning in the lesson, and on the teacher side it is a way to offer more information on learning outcomes. Students who struggle with the reflective questions in the Exit Ticket can be taught to go back over the material after the lesson; the teacher can take this opportunity too to think about what the students need in their next lesson to get closer to achieving those objectives.
Exit Ticket Models
Here are two great examples, taken from Teaching with the Instructional Cha-Cha (Dickson and Nickelsen, 2018).
The first is called the 3, 2, 1 model and appears to be one of the more popular templates. It’s simple and easy to adapt.
I have used it as a final stage in a reading lesson to extend student responses to the text, and just after the production stage of a grammar lesson to get more focused feedback.
The next model is specifically for vocabulary. It includes space for noting new vocabulary and space for your student to elaborate on their understanding of the new language.
This example would work well with higher level students, such as those preparing for the B2 First for Schools or C1 Advanced exam. I wouldn’t necessarily use this with students who don’t know the word elaborate – though for exam students this is perfect, as they get to see the verb and its noun form regularly.
I’ve presented two examples here just to whet your appetite – the internet is teeming with great ideas you can use, but when you find something, always keep your own students central in your thinking. While both of the examples here are great Exit Tickets, they are not universally appropriate – and the same will go for what you find online.
Set Up
Setting up Exit Tickets isn’t a complicated procedure. Essentially, between ten to fifteen minutes before the end of a lesson you give each student an Exit Ticket and then give them between two to five minutes, depending on the class levels and the complexity of the Exit Ticket model, to complete the ticket.
After completing the Exit Ticket comes peer teaching.
You ask students to compare their tickets with another student and to help each other with anything they struggled with. Prompts for this are often included in Exit Tickets, for example, the ‘two questions you still have’ from the earlier example.
Finally, you ask for feedback from individuals and can provide immediate feedback. Actually, the final final step, and a very important step to include, is to collect the Exit Tickets at the end of class and use them to influence how you plan for your next lesson, because the information contained there will show you what areas you need to focus on in review materials. Unless, of course, you want to use the Exit Tickets as a lead-in to the students’ homework assignment – I’ve seen them used that way as well.
Imagine the set-up as going something like this. Your lesson was on the Present Continuous, and you have finished the productive task. Next you give some feedback, then you hand out an Exit Ticket. Let’s say this particular ticket asks students to list five things they know about the Present Continuous.
After a few minutes of writing and comparing, you ask one of your students for one thing that they know about the present perfect. They answer: ‘The present perfect connects two different times.’ This is a good start – though the student could go further by telling us which times we connect when we use the present perfect, as opposed to, say, the past perfect.
After some further feedback and clarification, if a suitable amount of time permits for extensive clarification, you take in the Exit Tickets.
Reflections
I shall finish with some thoughts about Exit Tickets now that I have had some experience with them in my lessons.
- I find it easier to adapt than to create, so instead of producing Exit Tickets from scratch, I go hunting. This also exposes me to different styles of Exit Tickets, which can help with generating ideas for developing my own in the future.
- Be mindful of the level of language on your Exit Tickets, as we want students to focus on the material they covered in class, not on deciphering additional or irrelevant language. For example, imagine using that vocabulary-focused Exit Ticket from earlier with A2 students, and how much time it would take to clarify the various elaboration strategies.
- Adapting Exit Tickets for use with Google Forms is very practicable and aside from the usual conveniences of having results in one place, the spreadsheet you create can also be imported or adapted to create review material on learning platforms such as Kahoot! There’s actually a handy guide to this on their website.
- Exit Tickets don’t always have to be written; in fact, there’s a post on Rachel Tsateri’s blog, TheTeflZone, about using Exit Tickets orally.
An Exit Ticket
It wouldn’t be an article on Exit Tickets if we didn’t finish with one of our own – so here are your questions to promote self-reflection!
- What are three things you now know about Exit Tickets?
- What are two doubts or questions you have about Exit Tickets?
- Which of your classes do you think would respond best to Exit Tickets?
Bibliography
Dickson Melissa and Nickelsen LeAnn. (2018). Teaching with the Instructional Cha-Chas: Four Steps to Make Learning Stick. Solution Tree Press.
Tsateri, Rachel. (2025). ‘The Oral Exit Ticket’, TheTeflZone, 17 August. Available at: https://teflzoneracheltsateri.wordpress.com/2025/08/17/the-oral-exit-ticket/ (Accessed 01/07/2026)
Biography
Stephen Tarbuck is a senior teacher, teacher trainer, writer and workshop presenter at International House Toruń in Poland.
