Assessment Tool

Exit Slips

Grades
K - 12
Printout Type
Assessment Tool

About this printout

This printout provides prompts that help students reflect on and process new information and think critically, and offers teachers the opportunity to differentiate upcoming instruction based on these reflections.

Teaching with this printout

Exit Slips help students reflect on what they have learned, allow students to express what or how they are thinking about new information.  This particular printout includes prompts for assessment that fall into three categories:

  • Prompts that document learning
  • Prompts that emphasize the process of learning
  • Prompts to evaluate the effectiveness of instruction.
  1. Before your lesson, determine a key concept that you want students to think about or for which you wish to gather information.
  2. Explain to students that they are going to respond to a prompt posed to the class, which is related to the day’s lesson or information learned.
  3. At the end of your lesson or five minutes before the end of class, distribute the appropriate Exit Slip printout and ask students to complete it.  You may state the prompts orally to your students or project it visually on an overhead or display board.  You may also distribute notecards or have students use notebook paper to record their responses instead of using the printout.
  4. If this is the first time that students have used an Exit Slip, you may wish to model the process and expectations for the students. 
  5. Before students leave the classroom, collect their Exit Slips, and use them to help assess and inform future instruction.

More ideas to try

  • Cut and paste student responses onto a class handout.  Copy and distribute to your class the next day.  Use the handout to recap the previous days lesson or ask students to discuss their findings in groups.  The following questions could be posed:
    • Are there comments that you agree with or disagree with?
    • Did someone write something that surprises you, or is there something you hadn’t thought of?
  • Exit Slips can be emailed by each student at the end of each session, or they can be a part of an ongoing class blog or wiki.
  • Prior to the next session, review all of the students’ Exit Slips to determine how the next class session may need to be structured differently to meet the needs of all learners in your classroom.
  • Exit Slips may be collected as a part of an assessment portfolio for each student to document their growth over a certain topic, unit, or school year.

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