Are You Okay? Checking in With Students Using SEL Exit Tickets

Key Points

• Social and emotional learning (SEL) exit tickets are a simple, yet powerful way to check in on how students are feeling. Ashley and Alison share step-by-step guidance on how to develop and use this tool.
• For SEL exit tickets to be truly impactful, it’s important to truly listen to what students share and make adjustments to best meet their needs. Ashley and Alison offer tips on putting this strategy into action.

A few weeks ago, I (Alison) had COVID … again. Luckily, my symptoms weren’t too bad, but being at home—isolating from family and friends—brought me back to those days when I was teaching university classes online. My children were attending high school from their bedrooms, often in bed, minds and bodies numbed by too much time alone, online and indoors, disconnected from face-to-face contacts that happen when hanging out with friends, going to school, showing up for afterschool jobs, participating in sports and activities—that is, interacting with people out in the world. 

As researchers, several years later, we are back to our work with educators, once again co-designing SEL infused project-based learning activities and returning to high school classrooms to observe, support, and hopefully deepen our understanding of how to make learning meaningful, relevant, and fun to students and their teachers. But this time something feels different. So many students are quiet these days, rarely volunteering to respond to questions or share their ideas. Any downtime is quickly consumed by check-ins with social media or other online connections. Many students are reluctant to engage with their teachers, and they often shy away from working together in collaborative groups. We wonder, are our students okay? How do we really know? 

What Are SEL Exit Tickets? 

One way we can tell is by asking students, regularly and genuinely, and in ways that feel safe to them, to tell us the truth. In our research project, Compose Our World, which explores an approach to project-based learning and language arts, teachers give students social and emotional learning (SEL) exit tickets that ask about their experience in the classroom. This is just one way to integrate SEL with academic instruction, creating engaging, high-quality learning experiences for students. 

Students answer two to five quick questions anonymously at the end of class. Ideally, teachers give the SEL exit tickets regularly (e.g., weekly or a couple of times a week). Keeping the SEL exit tickets short and targeted allows teachers to quickly analyze student responses, determine how to best support students’ social and emotional needs, and make adjustments in the classroom the very next day.

Working With Feedback

It might sound simple to ask your students about their experiences in your classroom, but what we’ve found is that it can be challenging to really listen to what students have to say. This is especially true if, for instance, your students’ responses surprise you, or your students’ feedback is not what you had hoped for. It takes curiosity, openness, and courage to not only ask your students about their social and emotional experiences in your classroom, but to be ready to listen to students and make adjustments to your teaching and/or classroom environment (Potvin, 2021). 

We recommend scheduling time to review and analyze students’ responses and be prepared to make changes based on what students tell you. See if you can identify patterns in students’ responses and also pay attention to the outliers. What is it that students are trying to tell you? What is there to celebrate? What is there to improve upon? 

It can be helpful to note your own feelings as you sift through student responses. Are you surprised? Relieved? Frustrated? Proud? Disappointed? You may feel a range of emotions as you listen to what your students are telling you. Balance being gentle with yourself—recognizing that the results you are reviewing are one snapshot on one day—with taking responsibility when students signal to you that there is something that can be improved upon. 

Make a plan for how you can act upon students’ responses to create a safer, more inclusive environment. Collaborate with colleagues to design an SEL exit ticket and then discuss the results together, helping each other to determine how to best respond to students’ needs. 

How to Develop and Use Your SEL Exit Tickets

1. Design an SEL exit ticket. Begin with what you are wondering about. Do you want to know if your students thought the assignment was interesting? Or do you want to know how they felt during class? Go beyond what students learned and into what’s happening for them in the learning process. 

2. Ask students: Give your students the SEL exit ticket.

3. Listen to students: Review and analyze the results. Begin with low inference observations:
   • What stands out to you? What patterns do you notice? 
   • What, if anything, is confusing? 
   • What are you proud of? 
   • What would you like to improve? 
   • How do you feel when you look at your students’ responses? 

4. Respond to students: Based on the results, determine your next steps.
   • What is something you could do in your classroom tomorrow? What is something you could do in your classroom over the next week or few weeks? 
   • How can you share results with students? What patterns could be taken up in a class discussion and when might individual conversations with students be warranted? 
   • How might you brainstorm changes together, revisit and revise classroom agreements, or learn more from students?

The views in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of CASEL.

To learn more about the work of Compose Our World and SEL within project-based learning, read the CASEL report, Integrated Learning, Integrated Lives: Highlighting Opportunities for Transformative SEL Within Academic Instruction.

Alison G. Boardman, PhD, is an associate professor in Equity, Bilingualism, and Biliteracy in the School of Education at the University of Colorado Boulder, and a former special education teacher. Her current research includes supporting students with disabilities during project-based learning and enacting high quality collaborative learning experiences in inclusive classrooms. 

Ashley Seidel Potvin, PhD, is a research associate in the Renée Crown Wellness Institute at University of Colorado Boulder and a former middle school teacher. She designs, studies, and teaches programs focused on supporting educators to cultivate compassion for themselves and others, to deepen their leadership capacities, and to work towards just and compassionate schools.

Related Posts:

• Inquiry-Based Learning: What Happens When We Put Kids in Control of Their Learning?
• Building “STEMpathy”: Engineering Inclusive Classrooms Through Project-Based Learning
• 5 Meaningful, Standards-Based SEL Activities for the Classroom

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