Exit Slips - Image Connection

Grade 9 Science teacher Theo came to me with an issue common to many teachers – students were not thinking about the connection between the content covered and their life beyond the walls of the classroom; they “don’t connect the things we’re doing in Science class to the world around them.”  Turning to the front matter of the curriculum, we realized that this fell under the targeted skills of analyzing and interpreting, and developing an interest in Science.

We grappled with a variety of strategies, finally setting on a progressive scaffolding of exit slips.  Students would be given an image, taken from the world around them, at the end of a lesson and be asked to connect that image to what they've learned in class. 

Jan Chappius, in Seven Strategies of Assessment for Learning, states that “this closure activity deepens awareness of the intended learning” (p.102), and suggest forming “a question or two designed to help students investigate mismatches between prior understanding and present experience” (p. 74).

We saw, throughout the course of our first three images, students reduce the amount of unsure thinking they had, and form stronger connections between the images and their learning. 

Student comments:

Connecting Science content to their world:

•  “It helped us to use every day metaphors to help us in our science unit.”
•     “…it helps us to make reasonable connections about what we’re learning. When we do this, it forces us to think harder about a topic, which is really helpful.”
•  “It affected how I looked at different things because we can connect what we saw to something that we might see every day.”

Affect on their interest level in the topic:

• “It makes it more interesting because it connects it to the real world and makes me think about the topic in different ways.”
•  “…it was interesting to see some real world examples.”

Classroom:

•   “They increased my level of interest a [sic] it and they made me think more deeply about what we are learning.”
•  “…helped in class because then I started writing down notes of what I learned that would help me with tests 
• “We were able to say our opine [sic] and not worry on what other’s would say.”

Theo found it “easy to implement,” felt it made the students “engage with the concepts,” and saw noticeable improvements in understanding (compared to previous years) on summative assessments of the concepts covered in the exit images.

Our next step is to do the same process, but with current articles.  I will blog as soon as we see how the next step in the series affects student learning and engagement!

Here’s how to add image-prompt exit slips to your classroom:

Step 1:

Find an image that connects to the concept you are covering in class.  The connection can be obvious (ie: an overloaded electrical panel in the Science 9 electricity unit) or more metaphorical (ie: an image of a thin, high waterfall in the same unit).

Step 2:

Come up with a guiding question for student responses, asking them to form some type of connection between the image and the learning they have done thus far in class.

Step 3:

At the “stopping point” of the concept, ask students to respond to the question and image prompt.  Encourage them to explain all of their thinking.  They should be writing for the entire time (max 5 minutes) allotted to them.

Step 4:

After students have submitted their responses (either electronically—we used a googleform— or on paper), discuss the connections they formed.  This discussion is vital, as one of Theo’s students informed us: the exit slips “helped me remember because I would connect what happened and then we explained it afterwards…it helped me focus better.”