Hello, my name is Bret Harrison, and I am a middle school science teacher. In 2005 I contributed the following introduction to the Northern Nevada Writing Project's Writing Across the Curriculum Guide:

"Exit tickets are one of the best teaching strategies I've ever seen for getting students to immediately focus on the essential core content of lessons. They are particularly effective because they are designed to not only require the student to concentrate on the essential elements of a lesson, but then the students communicate succinctly using organized writing strategies.

"I primarily use the Exit Tickets as the strategy for assessing learning in Social Studies and Science lessons. In both cases, students are often introduced to new vocabulary, information and facts that are overwhelming. Since many of my students are classified as English Language Learners, finding a tool that requires them to read and communicate about the "essence" of the lesson is a critical learning objective, and the Exit Ticket fills the bill.

"At the heart of the Exit Ticket is an organized "hamburger" paragraph which contains a topic sentence, a minimum of three supporting details, and a concluding OR transitional sentence that leads to the next paragraph. By teaching the "hamburger" formula, my students were immediately empowered and began writing outstanding paragraphs in a matter of a few lessons. Evaluation became simpler for me, the teacher, as we employed peer grading and referred to a whole-class rubric for the first few lessons, teaching the students to recognize properly organized paragraphs and assess their own as well as peer work. Students who were struggling with basic paragraph writing were easily identified and received additional attention. Once paragraphs had been mastered, the transition to short essays was simple, and by the end of the term my students not only had some of the best writing in the school, but were clearly grasping more subject-matter content in Science and Social Studies, two subjects that traditionally intimidate and overwhelm ELL students."

Resources for Exit Tickets from WritingFix:
Teaching & assessing the hamburger paragraph:	Variations for Exit Tickets:
Color overhead of the hamburger paragraph The hamburger paragraph template for student writers Hamburger paragraph revision checklist & rubric 6-Trait suggestions for the hamburger paragraph exit ticket	We meet a lot of teachers who feel that the hamburger paragraph is not the most authentic type of writing you can ask your students to write; in truth, you don't see a lot of hamburger paragraphs in real-world writing. Alas, hamburger paragraphs seem to be one of those school-only writing tools; I can't bad-mouth them myself, for they do help students who have little or no understanding of how to structure a paragraph. We offer below other structures for writing that we feel would work equally well as an "exit ticket" for student writers.
Exit Ticket Variation #1: Haiku Exit Tickets .  Respond to the heart of a lesson with just seventeen syllables or words!  Sounds easy, but it's not.  Look over our lesson on teaching students how to write Haiku Riddles .  Once students understand the format of a haiku, require them to be written at the end of lectures, note-taking sessions, or at the end of a chapter reading.	Exit Ticket Variation #2: Important Book Exit Tickets.  These passages are similar to hamburger paragraphs but different enough so that students aren't aware they are still learning paragraph basics.  Look over our lesson on teaching students how to write Important Book Passages.  Once students understand the format, assign them to write these paragraphs at the end of lectures, at the end of note-taking sessions, at the end of chapter readings:  The important thing about the Battle of Gettysburg is...  The important thing about DNA is... The important thing about mean, median, and mode is...