Entrance Ticket

To assist in differentiation in math, I employ the use of entrance tickets. I would have the sheet on the students’ desks in the morning when they arrived with problems reflecting the prior day’s lesson. This gave me an idea of which students had learning gaps from the previous lesson, and I would differentiate accordingly. During the math lesson, I would teach the whole group lesson, and then for those who identified as struggling with the day prior, I would pull aside, reteach as needed, and draw connections to today’s lesson. Some students just needed a quick refresh and then felt like they could do the problem set independently, while others would continue to work with me through the entire problem set.

This is an effective tool at checking for understanding and differentiating accordingly, especially because there is time and space from the initial lesson to the entrance ticket so it checks that the new skills have set in their minds. It is quick and gives a task to do when coming into class so that the room is quiet and on task to start the day. In the future I would incorporate the entrance ticket into the following lesson by handing the checked ticket back to the students so they can see how they did and talk through the problems, pointing out where common issues came up.