Icebreakers and Exit Tickets - 30 Questions

This post is a combination of my most recent Practical Ed Tech Newsletter and one that I published last fall. Whether you're using an online platform to conduct icebreakers and exit ticket activities or you're just reading the questions aloud to your class (AKA the Old Fashioned Way), I hope these help. 

Icebreaker Questions
1. Would you rather be too hot or too cold?
2. Where would you go if I gave you a free plane ticket today?
3. Tell a story about the third picture in your phone.
4. Do you put your shoes on in the same order every day?
5. What's the best way to start your day?
6. Coffee or tea?
7. Ice cream or popsicle?
8. Football or soccer?
9. Right handed or left handed?
10. Who was the last person you talked to before coming into this room?
11. Would you rather be able to fly or be invisible?
12. What did you do for fun last Saturday?
13. Would you rather fly or drive 1,000 miles?
14. How many countries can you name?
15. What's the best way to get to Carnegie Hall?

Exit Ticket Questions
1. How would you describe today’s lesson to a classmate who was absent?
2. What’s a new-to-you word or term you heard today?
3. What’s one thing you’d change about today’s lesson?
4. How did today’s lesson make you feel?
5. How well do you think you’d do if we had a quiz next week?
6. What was your favorite part of today’s lesson?
7. What surprised you about today’s class?
8. What’s something you wish was different in class?
9. What’s one question you’d put on a quiz about today’s lesson?
10. How would you help a classmate who didn’t understand today’s lesson?
11. What’s one thing you’d like to learn more about?
12. What was the easiest part of today’s class?
13. How did today’s lesson fit with the one before it?
14. What do you think the next lesson will be about?
15. What was the hardest part of today’s class?

New Readlee Features for the New School Year

Readlee was one of my favorite new tools in the last school year. The basic concept of Readlee is your students complete assignments by reading to their computers then Readlee uses artificial intelligence to provide you and your students will feedback on their reading. For the new school year Readlee has added some new features. 

The biggest update to Readlee for the 2022-23 school year is the addition of a Free Read option. This means that instead of you having to assign something to students to read, they pick what they want to read. When students use the Free Read option they can read anything from an article they've found online to a passage from Adventure According to Humphrey or a classic work like The Grapes of Wrath. The Free Read option still provides you and your students with information about how many words were read, time spent reading, reading speed, and unique words read. And passages read in a Free Read count toward another of Readlee's new features, Streaks. 

Streaks is a new feature in Readlee that simply keeps track of how many days in a row a student has done any reading in Readlee. A little flame icon appear next to their names and avatars in their Readlee accounts to show students how long their current streak is. A little timer icon warns them when they're in danger of losing a streak. 

The third update to Readlee is a new option to customize student avatars. Rather than just seeing initials in a little box or circle, students now have a customizable little avatars in their Readlee accounts. See my screenshot above for an example of an avatar and a streak. 

Watch the video embedded below for an overview of the new Readlee features. 

Watch the video embedded below of a complete overview of how Readlee works from a teacher's perspective and from a student's perspective.