5 Easy, End of Class Reviews to Check & Build Students' Content Mastery

Exit Slips are a way for the teacher to know how the lesson went and what they should follow up on. The teacher poses a question, the students write responses, and then the students turn them in before the leave. You can have them write answers on a notecard, have them type their answers, or have them write them on a sheet you provide. Sometimes teachers format them as Tweets to encourage brevity. If you want templates for exit slips, check out this 20 page handout from the Massachusetts Teachers Association– by my count they have over 50 different exit slips templates and they are all super excellent. Randomly, Canva also has a lot of free, downloadable templates you can use too.

There are several types of questions teachers can ask.

Type 1: About learning

Here you ask the students what they learned or ask them a specific question based on your instruction. Sometimes people ask “What was new for you today?” or “What did you already know?” Others ask, “What did you learn today?” or “What stuck with you today?”

Type 2: About the process of learning

Here you ask students about what questions they still have, what they are still confused about, or what they want to know more about. You can also ask how they will apply this content to their own lives or to a new situation.

Type 3: About the instruction

Here you ask students to give feedback. Ask them about a particular instructional strategy that you tried, what they think could have been improved about the lesson, or what instructional activity they enjoyed. You can also ask them to rate the class.

Type 4: About the student

These prompts ask the students to self-reflect. Questions include “How hard did you work today?” “What could you have done in class to help yourself learn?” and so on.

3-2-1 Format

One way to structure the exit slip is with a 3-2-1 format. Here you ask the students to write three things they learned, two things they found interesting, and one thing they still have questions about. You can also change the 3-2-1 to match what you want to know (like 3 things you learned, 2 questions you have, and 1 way class could be improved)

Six word memoirs

Have students each come up with six words to summarize the lesson.

At the end of class give students a few minutes to create a graphic organizer about what they learned. They can construct it in any fashion, but the goal is for them to organize and see connections between the concepts. You can also do this at the end of the unit to encourage them to zoom out from an individual lesson and to see the structure of the unit.

Timed writing activities are one of the best ways to build writing fluency. They can also be used to help students process the content of a class. Here you would pose a question about the class (even something as bland as “What did you learn today?” works) and give students one minute to write as much as they possibly can on the topic. To make it a writing fluency building activity, have them count their words at the end and set a goal for number of words written before they start. To make it a community building activity, have them share what they wrote. You can also make it a two part activity with question one being what did you learn and two being what are you still confused about. The activity gets their brains going and takes very little time.

Option 1: Give students a selection of key words from the lesson. They need to write or say a summary of the lesson using those words. Option 2: Have students generate a list of important words from the lesson and then pick one word to use in a sentence summarizing the lesson.

This is a collaborative review strategy. Each student writes down a take away they had from the lesson. Then, they find a partner and “give” an insight and “get” an insight. You can have them write it down or do it orally. You can do just one partnering or multiple– and you can collect their takeaways at the end to keep track of what students got out of the lesson!