Using Exit Tickets in Kindergarten

Hey all! I'm so excited to finally be blogging about something that has made my life so much easier over the past year and a half--using exit tickets! Sound a little heavy for kindergarten? Some people think so. Let me be the first to say that as much as I enjoy meaningful data, I also believe that giving students too many lengthy formative assessments can rob us of valuable instructional time. I want to share how I gather information that is USEFUL, and how I do it QUICKLY. Exit tickets are my answer! 

These really all started with my own personal struggle. You all know that there is just never enough time. I love to spend a lot of time with hands-on experiences, problem solving, and discussion. The paper-pencil task at the end is where I would often run out of time. Sometimes a full worksheet is great, but you don't need one every single day! But if you still want the physical evidence that your students "got it"--and who doesn't-- then the exit ticket is the perfect solution.

You can see from the pictures below that the first student can 1.) recognize the numeral 15, 2.) understand that 15 is ten and five extras, and 3.) fill in ten frames to represent the number 15. When the students are given an exit ticket every single day, you have ongoing evidence that the students are getting the concept you're teaching.

 The student below is clearly in need of some remediation or a check-in. It's not clear from this particular ticket if the student had an issue with recognizing that this shows 17, or simply had a numeral recognition/writing issue (which was the case). But having this in hand was a great springboard for a little check-in with this student.

Exit tickets work great for language arts as well! I use exit tickets to assess letter recognition, rhyming words, CVC words, and more!

Wondering what to do with those little slips of paper once you are done with them? You can simply send these home to show the parents that you are constantly keeping up with how their child is doing. This is what I often do with my language arts exit tickets. I was doing that with my math tickets too until a reader commented that she has her students glue them into their math notebooks! Best idea ever, in my opinion! So now, I often have the students glue their tickets into their interactive math notebooks as well.

Want to give exit tickets a try? You can access an exit ticket freebie right HERE! This freebie is for decomposing numbers, which I think is a great little check to do with your students even if you're not currently teaching that right now.

You can also check out my exit ticket bundles for math and language arts by clicking on the images below. You can also get the sets individually in my TpT shop.

I hope that you will give exit tickets a try in your classroom!