Brian Townsend is an IXL Professional Learning Specialist with eight years of experience as a middle school teacher, department chair, and instructional coach.
What two techniques should be in every teacher’s toolbox? Bell work and exit tickets! Bell work gets your students warmed up while giving you a quick formative assessment, and exit tickets check how well your class caught what you taught that day.
IXL makes creating and evaluating bell work and exit tickets both easier and faster. In fact, IXL is so flexible we’ve seen teachers use it for bell work and exit tickets in a variety of different ways. Here are some of our favorite ways teachers use IXL for daily assessments.
Assigning skills
Bell work
Before class begins, many teachers simply assign their students a skill to work on. IXL skills are great for bell work because they let learners work at their own pace and give them immediate feedback on their answers. You can choose a skill from the previous day’s lesson, a skill from the beginning of the year that you’re spiraling in, or even an upcoming skill to build your class’ interest and collect some quick data before your lesson.
Some teachers who want their students’ bell work to be more personalized will encourage them to use the Progress report in the student Analytics tab. Students can use this report to find skills they’ve started practicing, but in which they haven’t reached proficiency (a SmartScore of 80) yet. Aiming for proficiency in skills is a good habit for students to develop, as research shows that reaching proficiency in at least two on-grade-level IXL skills per subject per week raises test scores!
Speaking of personalized practice, teachers who use IXL’s Real-Time Diagnostic can also have students work on the tailored skill recommendations from their Diagnostic Action Plans. This is a great way to get students to fill in their knowledge gaps without taking up instructional time.
Exit ticket
After teaching a lesson, it’s easy to find a skill aligned to that day’s topic and assign it your class. As your students work, you can track their progress in real time using the Live Classroom report. The report automatically flags students who answer a number of questions incorrectly, making it a breeze to spot learners who need some additional support.
Group Jams
Bell work
Group Jams aren’t just a fun tool while teaching a lesson; they’re also an engaging way to warm up your whole class for learning. During a Group Jam, each student sees the same exact question as you do, making it easy to have students work with partners or in small groups. Additionally, a Group Jam’s results can help you spot key concepts you need to review with your class, so you can shape your lesson to meet students’ needs.
Exit ticket
Group Jams are made for gauging your class’ understanding in the moment, so they fit perfectly at the end of class. Create a Group Jam for your class using one or more IXL skills to get them all working on the same question, then look at the results to see the common mistakes students are making.
IXL Quizzes
IXL Quizzes are unique: You can easily make a bell work quiz on the topic you’re about to teach, then copy it and have it pull double-duty as an exit ticket! Using an IXL Quiz for both sets you up to collect data on what your students know before you teach as well as the impact of the lesson.
Just create a quick three-to-five-question quiz covering that day’s lesson topic as bell work, then make a copy of the quiz and generate new questions to get an exit ticket. After your students finish each quiz, check the Quiz Analysis report to see which questions proved the most difficult and the students who answered them incorrectly.
Between skill practice, Group Jams, and IXL Quizzes, you have a variety of ways to use IXL for bell work and exit tickets. Try them out to see which ones work for you!