Questions to Make Your Back-to-School Student Survey Worthwhile

Getting to know your students during the first weeks of school is essential for motivating them, understanding their individual needs as learners, and integrating them into the larger classroom community throughout the school year.

The back-to-school survey is one of the most tried-and-true strategies to quickly find out some of the most important information about your students—their cultural background, their interests outside of school, their struggles, their dreams, their academic goals. The responses you receive can also help set the groundwork for building strong relationships with students. 

That said, asking the right questions can be tricky. Overly specific questions—for example, like “How many siblings do you have?” or “What is your favorite subject?”—aren’t all that useful because they tend to result in curt, uninformative answers, writes educator and author Katie Martin. 

Instead, educators suggest asking open-ended questions that allow students to show you who they are in greater depth. The best surveys, writes educator and coach Elena Aguilar, result in answers that help teachers “create a classroom culture where student voice is valued, where students feel their needs will be attended to, and where students begin to trust their teacher.” 

To help you get started, we’ve compiled a grab-bag list of 25 effective, teacher-tested survey questions—aimed primarily at middle and high school students—that you can use to quickly learn about students’ home lives, sources of support, strengths, weaknesses, learning preferences, and more. Some questions might be a better fit for your classroom than others; the goal is to find the right mix of questions to elicit the most helpful responses from your new students.

Tell Me About You

Show your students you care about who they are as people by starting your back-to-school survey with some light get-to-know-you questions. Uncovering their deeper interests and passions can help inform your lesson planning throughout the year, writes elementary teacher Tara Olagaray. To build engagement—and a sense of relevance—in the classroom, “I like to write math story problems that feature student hobbies,” like cooking, martial arts, or Roblox, Olagaray says.

• Something I enjoyed this summer was _____.
• Outside of your home and school, where do you spend the most time? What do you do there?
• What languages do you speak? What language do you speak at home?
• What is your favorite TV show, movie, or song? Why?
• If you could have three wishes, what would they be?
• If you could have lunch with a famous person (living or dead), who would it be? Why?
• What do you think you want to do after you graduate from high school?

Building Support

Some students may struggle in school—particularly at the start of the year—because they feel like they don’t belong or that no one cares about them. Asking students to reflect on their sources of support—and share how you can help them feel supported—can bolster their sense of belonging from the start. Uncovering “the conditions necessary for students to learn, be happy, feel relevant, and be resilient” in school can greatly impact kids’ social and academic success, writes psychology professor Maurice J. Elias.

• What helps you feel welcomed? How do you like to be greeted?
• Who at home helps you bounce back from setbacks?
• Tell me about a teacher who you feel knew you well. What did he or she do to get to know you?
• How do you like to be recognized for accomplishments and hard work?
• Who do you want me to tell when you do really well in school?

Exploring Ups and Downs

It’s helpful to know what your students are struggling with—not just academically, but personally. When Aguilar’s middle school students shared “difficult in-school or out-of-school experiences” in their survey responses, it opened the door for impromptu conversations with students and helped her support them throughout the year. On the flip side, asking students to reflect on what motivates them can help them keep a positive outlook when things get difficult—and give teachers an insight on how to tap into that motivation.

• Tell me about something that has been hard for you in your life.
• Tell me about something you feel proud of.
• It was difficult for me to learn _____. It was easy for me to learn _____. Why?
• What inspires you in school?
• What happens in school that makes you afraid, frustrated, or defeated?
• If you could change anything about school, it would be _____.

Let’s Talk About Learning

Knowing more about your students’ study habits, their preferred method of learning, and what engages them the most can help you differentiate your lessons and better assist students who fall behind. Additionally, there can be long-term academic benefits when students are given the opportunity to reflect on their own learning.

• How do you learn best: hands-on, reading, listening, independent work, small group work, etc.? Why?
• How do you typically study for a test or a quiz?
• Describe a moment in school last year when you felt really engaged. Why do you think that moment was such a positive one for you?
• Describe the most interesting activity you ever did in school.
• What are some characteristics of a good teacher, in your opinion?
• Write down three things you did not understand in math class [or history class, science class, etc.] last year: _____.
• What else can you tell me that would help me be a better teacher to you?

(Questions sourced from Lindsay Kervan, Tara Olagaray, Education World, Elena Aguilar, Mr. DeRosa, Maurice J. Elias, Cheryl Abla, Macomb Intermediate School District.)