The 3-2-1 exit ticket: the simplest daily check I use

I want to know, at the end of a lesson, who understood it and who didn't. I used to figure this out by gut feel — the kids who looked confused, the ones who went quiet. That's not a system. It's guessing. The 3-2-1 exit ticket is the simplest formal check I've found that actually gives me useful information without taking real time from the lesson. **How it works:** At the end of the lesson, you give each child a small slip of paper (or they write in their notebook, or on a sticky note — the format doesn't matter). They fill in: - **3 things they learned** today - **2 things they want to remember** (or found interesting) - **1 question they still have** That's it. Three to five minutes, depending on the age. They hand it in on the way out, or put it in a basket. **Why it works for early elementary:** The format is structured enough that young learners can follow it without getting lost. "Write what you learned" is too open — kids stare at the page. "Write three things you learned" gives them a number to fill. That constraint actually makes it easier, not harder. The "one question" at the bottom is the most useful piece for me. It tells me exactly where the confusion is and who to check in with first thing the next morning. Sometimes the same question appears twelve times — that tells me the lesson needs reteaching for the whole class. **What to do with them:** Read them the same day, before the next session. It takes about ten minutes for a class of twenty. Sort them into three loose piles: got it, almost got it, confused. That grouping shapes how I structure the next morning's first fifteen minutes. You don't need to respond to every exit ticket. But if a child wrote a genuinely interesting question, writing one sentence back on the slip and returning it the next day costs almost nothing and means a lot. The 3-2-1 works because it's completely low-stakes for the student and genuinely informative for the teacher. That combination is rarer than it sounds.