Don’t Wait for the Exit Ticket to Find Out What They Don’t Know!

It’s not the exit ticket that needs tweaking!  A FB teacher requested help designing revealing exit tickets to minimize ‘students fall through the cracks’ even though she teaches to her middle schoolers’ eyes and has random comp checks.  Here are four concrete suggestions:

1. Buy a remote presentation device so you are able to click through what is on your board from any part of the room.  Hover around the students who struggle and create a friendly bond of checking in.
2.  Create a slide with visual support for each activity to help students who can’t follow what you think is comprehensible input.  I call this a daily tech guide and average 100 slides a day to ensure 100% comprehensible input.  You can probably get by with 10 – 20 and you will reuse them.  For examples see below*
3. During class show the slide that tells them to take one minute and  turn to their partner and explain what  they understand. I did this consistently after explanations and it helped!  One of my musicians is making a little song for the students to hear that will give them the vocabulary for this in a video.   I should have it before school starts.   While students are doing this, circle around and make sure you listen to what they are saying and in that moment clarify. My students know they can use English quietly for this and for the next 30 seconds when I ask in the TL, “Who has a difference of opinion?” They are allowed to answer me in English and if necessary I ask them in the target language to let me show them an explanation. Another 30 seconds checking in with the partners with problems and we are able to move on without leaving anyone behind.  All of these expressions will be in the song and the students will see them in action!
4. I have three parts to my daily closure, we play the song that tells them to clean up, the song to write down their homework in their assignment books, and the song to reflect on what they have learned.  These songs are available in five different languages.  The most important is the last song which the students can’t help but sing “Hoy, Hoy aprendí” and we sing it and then I quickly have them tell me their partner one thing they learned, and  as we are heading to line up the last 40 seconds before the bell rings, I spot check and they tell me as their exit line.

Make your comprehensible input visually comprehensible input.  Have students check in with one another as needed.  Create amazing routines at the end of class using transition videos.

You’ll be glad you did!

For more on what a DTG looks like, check out these videos.

For videos in Spanish click here.

For French, English, Latin, Mandarin, German and Italian click on the black menu above!