Entrance cards can be used effectively to achieve different goals, such as activating prior knowledge or preparing students for upcoming material and encouraging process-oriented thinking. By carefully formulating questions and integrating them into your lesson, you create opportunities for students to reflect on their own learning and improve their understanding through active participation.
- Activity goal
- Activate prior knowledge | Exchange knowledge
- When
- In class | Post class
- Where
- Hybrid | Offline | Online
- Duration
- < 10 minutes
- Group size
- Small | Medium | Large
- Materials
You can use physical tickets, by having students write the answer on paper, which they can hand in to you. You can also use digital tools such as Mentimeter, Padlet and Canvas quiz. This will give you immediate insight into the result.
Step-by-step
Step 1
Consider the purpose of the entrance ticket. Two purposes can be defined: to activate prior knowledge and to prepare material. Based on the purpose, you can come up with a question. See "variants, tips & tricks" for examples of questions.
Step 2
Think about how and when you want students to answer. See "tools and materials" for tips. Instruct students when and how to answer the question. Students can make this as preparation or there is a deadline to the time.
Step 3 (optional)
Read through the entrance tickets. The lesson could be adapted based on the input provided if it shows that prior knowledge is different from the expectation.
Step 4
Incorporate the question into your teaching moment. Come back to the question, and relate to it. So that students can also reflect back on their previous answer.
Tip 1
Proces questions:
- Today I want to learn ... /Today I want to learn more about ... /Today I want to get better at ...
- My learning goal today is ...
- Some evidence that I will achieve my learning goal is ...
- I need to learn more about ...
Tip 2
Content questions:
- What do you think this [concept] means....
- How do you see [concept]....
- What do you think the answer to this question is....
You can use physical tickets, by having students write the answer on paper, which they can hand in to you. You can also use digital tools such as Mentimeter, Padlet and Canvas quiz. This will give you immediate insight into the result.
Consider the tools and materials mentioned here as suggestions. In many cases it’s possible to use alternative tools. Please turn to the Learning & Innovation team of your faculty first to see which online and offline tools are available and how to apply them.
