Student-Centered Strategies: Exit Passes

As you know, the high school team at Lincoln School is spending our in-house, professional development time this year by focusing on our instructional practice.  September is the first month where we’ll be focusing on a particular instructional strategy and we’re kicking things off with exit passes. An exit pass (also called an exit ticket, ticket out the door, and probably other names I’m not aware of) is a tool teachers can use at the conclusion of a class/lesson to quickly ascertain the students’ level of understanding of the material (concepts, content, skills) covered that day. As a formative assessment, an exit pass can be used to inform future instruction or remediation based on individual responses and group trends. They are also useful in helping the individual student better understand their own level of cognition. They can be completed manually (paper and pen), orally, visually, and/or digitally and can occur in just the last moments of a class when time is limited. In general, an exit pass looks something like this:

• The teacher asks a question about that day’s class content.
• Students answer the question in the format requested/provided as they are leaving the room.
• The teacher reviews student responses, noting where students are able to demonstrate their learning and where they are not.
• The teacher draws conclusions about the individual’s or group’s understanding and plans future learning opportunities accordingly.

In creating effective exit passes, there are a number of points a teacher should consider:

The Importance of Summarizing

On a very basic level, all humans learn through summarizing concepts/content. This might include simplifying, categorizing, or simply re-stating information, but in all instances it involves the student going through the process of recalling information, restating information in their own words, and transmitting this information orally or in writing. It might include the process of transferring information from abstract concepts to concrete examples or the opposite, and in either case it allows students to make comparisons to already understood concepts. Think that’s not important? Teach something new to a child and listen for how often you hear the words “So it’s like ___.” Along with summarization, comparison may be one of the most important tools we have in understanding new ideas.    

The Importance of Specificity

Some exit passes are very general and include questions like “On a scale of one to five, how well did you understand the difference between metaphors and analogies?” There is a time and place for such questions, but by only asking general questions you leave room for students to misinterpret the degree of their own understanding. By asking more specific questions and for the inclusion of examples, the teacher can help the student better understand the level of their mastery and gather usable data to plan future instruction. For example, following the question above with the second prompt, “Provide an example of one metaphor and one analogy.” the teacher can better assess the students’ actual mastery of the concept or skill. A third question, “Explain the difference.” allows the students to actually dig into the metacognitive process.

The importance of Feedback

Asking the question is just the beginning. To be truly effective as a learning tool (and not just a planning tool) the teacher must close the communication loop by letting the student know how they did. Since exit passes are formative assessments of student understanding, this feedback can be informal. It might come as a note back to the individual student, an entry task at the start of the next lesson delivered whole group, or an opportunity for peer feedback by having students review their exit passes in small groups. Regardless of the method chosen, feedback on the exit pass is essential to its usefulness and impact.

As a faculty, we will be practicing the use of exit passes throughout the month of September. We will learn about and write exit passes during our full faculty meeting and during our common planning times. Each teacher will use exit passes throughout the month with students, and we’ll share examples of our exit passes and anecdotes from our experiences. Students should expect to see exit passes periodically in each of their classes, and as the month goes on parents can engage their students in conversation about their experience with the different kinds of passes teachers will create. Together, we can all (teachers, students, and parents) partner in creating a more cohesive, student-centered learning environment for all.