How to Successfully Teach Eureka Math (Engage NY Math): The Debrief and Exit Ticket

The debrief takes place after students complete the problem set. Part of the debrief includes allowing students to discuss their answers with their peers, and then reviewing the answers as a class. Once answers are checked, the debrief section of the teacher manual includes some questions to ask to help students reflect on their learning.

​As always, you do not have to ask all of these questions. Pick 2 or 3 that you really want to focus on. The debrief is really beneficial to help students make connections and also help you address any misconceptions that may have occurred with the students. This can open the doors for some really great math discussion!

Following the debrief, the last piece of the lesson is the exit ticket. The exit ticket is a quick assessment that the teacher can use to evaluate student understanding. It is usually between 1-3 questions and includes problems similar to those on the problem set. ​

Students should be allowed about 3 to 5 minutes to complete the exit ticket. Once students have finished, they will turn in the exit ticket and the teacher will look over them to assess student understanding. You can use the exit tickets to discover any misconceptions students may have picked up and be sure to address them in future lessons.

Because of the way Eureka lessons build upon each other, there is usually no need to completely reteach a lesson. So, if the results of your exit ticket are less than ideal, don’t panic! Take a few extra minutes at the beginning of the next lesson to really focus on the problem areas, and then move on. Chances are, students will pick up on the misconceptions over time as they continue to use the skills in future lessons.

Teaching Eureka lessons can be overwhelming at first, but hopefully you feel more at ease about it now that we’ve taken an in-depth look at each component. There is one more major piece to teaching Eureka - assessments! We will take a look at the assessments and how to grade them in the next post.