Exit Tap Cards

The Exit Tap Cards were designed to achieve three goals:

• Provide students with a quick system to reflect on their learning journey.
• Allow student to communicate how they are feeling in their learning.
• Help students identify next actions they can take to build/maintain momentum in their learning.

Inspired by Ben Landers‘ Daily Self Assessment Posters, the Exit Tap Cards live by your gym’s doors so that students can use them as they leave your class.

So the question that drove me to hit the drawing board and create these cards was as follows:

“How could Tap Cards be used to provide valuable insight to the teacher, a learning-focused reflection for students, and to help determine what needs to happen next to keep moving forward in one’s learning?”

Here’s what I started thinking:

Instead of “Wow”, “Good Job”, “Keep On Trying”, and “Need More Effort”, I created a set of cards with the following language:

⚠️ I’m Stuck!

🌱 I’m Making Progress!

🎉 I’m On A Roll!

🚀 I’m Feeling Out Of This World!

Here’s how they would work in an example lesson:

🎯 “I can underhand throw a beanbag towards a target with accuracy.“

⚠️ Abby taps the “I’m Stuck” card. Teacher takes a note to connect with her next lesson.

🌱 Billy taps the “I’m Making Progress!” card. He can share what he’s focused on next.

🎉 Hannah taps the “I’m On A Roll!” card. Teacher asks her “how does that feel?”

🚀 Jimmy taps the “I’m Feeling Out Of This World!” card. Teacher invites him to help teach others next class.

The focus is now on learning and achievement, with an eye on the future.

Speaking of which, I thought it would be cool to add “Next-Step Strategies” to the cards.

The idea here is to help students gain some clarity on what they can do next so that they enter the next lesson with a plan (and a little more confidence).

I decided on three strategies per card, with space for a fourth one that a) students can come up with themselves, or b) the teacher could fill in based on common strategies used in their teaching.

Here’s what this looks like:

When I first presented this idea to the community members over at #PhysEdU, we had some discussion about how these Exit Tap Cards are different than the “Not Yet!”, “Getting There!”, “Got It!”, and “Wow!” levels that we use to create our Learning Roadmaps.

Here’s the TL;DR of where that discussion led us to:

🗺️ Learning Roadmap Levels: “We’re I’m at in my learning”

👆 Tap Cards: “How I’m doing in my learning”

The big “Ah-Ha!” moment was realizing that a student can achieve the “GOT IT!” level, yet feel stuck in their learning (e.g. how to get to “WOW!”)

You can learn more about how these cards came to be in my blog post on them.

I hope your students enjoy using the Exit Tap Cards!

As always, thank you for your support! Happy Teaching!