100+ Fun Questions of the Day for Students to Use All School Year

Who would win in a battle: a bear with fins or a shark with paws? Nothing quite starts an exciting morning conversation like trying to answer that one!

If you’re a teacher, you can greatly appreciate how a fun question of the day for students can help light up a room full of students, especially when they go back to school.

In this blog post, we’ve compiled more than 100 questions of the day that are perfect conversation starters for elementary school and high school students.

Use this list from the first day of school all school year long and never scramble for morning meeting icebreaker questions again.

Plus, at the end of this page, you can download a free printable PDF of every fun question of the day to keep handy at your desk.

Sharing favorites is a simple way to for getting to your your students, and have your students get to know each other!

They’re especially great for elementary school students.

1. What is your favorite book? Why?
2. What is your favorite movie? Why?
3. What is your favorite subject? Why?
4. What is your favorite flavor of chips? Why?
5. What is your favorite genre of music? Why?
6. What is your favorite ice cream flavor? Why?
7. Where is your favorite place in the world? Why?
8. What is your favorite part of where you live? Why?
9. What is your favorite sport to play or watch? Why?
10. What’s your favorite thing to do with friends? Why?
11. What is your favorite game to play with friends? Why?
12. What is your favorite type of weather (or season)? Why?
13. Think about the teacher who has been your favorite so far. Why?
14. What are your family’s favorite pastimes? Which ones are your favorite?
15. What's your favorite family tradition for a holiday or other special occasion? Why?

Start your morning with stimulating questions that get students talking!

1. What would you want your superpower to be? How would you use it?
2. What rule do you think everyone in the world should have to obey? Why?
3. What special skills do you have? How could you teach them to other people?
4. What are three things that kids can do to help make the world a better place?
5. If you made up a new board game, what would it be like? How would people play it?
6. What three words best describe your personality? Why did you pick each of these words?
7. When you feel angry or upset, what do you do to help yourself feel better? Does it always help?
8. What does joy feel like? How would you describe joy to someone who has never experienced it?
9. If you decided to write a book, what would it be about? How would you make it interesting to readers?
10. What do you wish your friends would say to you so that you would know for sure that they really like you?
11. What items that are in your room at home could you use to build a fort? Describe how you'd put it together.
12. What is something that you thought you could not do then found out that you really could do it? How did you feel when that happened?

Sometimes the best way to get kids to answer questions is to ask them to choose between two things. To get them thinking, follow-up by asking them to explain their choice.

1. Would you rather eat a banana or a carrot? Why?
2. Would you rather be a unicorn or a dinosaur? Why?
3. Would you rather have a cat or a fish as a pet? Why?
4. Would you rather travel by train or by airplane? Why?
5. Would you rather play at a park or in your yard? Why?
6. Would you rather ride a bicycle or go roller skating? Why?
7. Would you rather eat rotten eggs or drink sour milk? Why?
8. Would you rather wear a t-shirt or a button-down shirt? Why?
9. Would you rather visit every country or fly to outerspace? Why?
10. Would you rather go to the doctor’s or the dentist’s office? Why?
11. Would you rather eat pizza or scrambled eggs for breakfast? Why?
12. Would you rather live in a tree house or an underground cave? Why?
13. Would you rather to take a trip to the mountains or to the beach? Why?
14. Would you rather grow wings to fly or gills to breathe underwater? Why?
15. Would you rather clean your room or wash the dishes after dinner? Why?
16. Would you rather have superhuman speed or superhuman strength? Why?
17. Would you rather sleep late every day or get up early every morning? Why?
18. Would you rather have vegetables or flowers growing out of your head? Why?
19. Would you rather snore while you’re awake or dream while you’re awake? Why?
20. Would you rather take an afternoon nap or spend all afternoon playing outside? Why?
21. Would you rather have to dye your hair ten different colors or go completely bald? Why?
22. Would you rather create a new popular toy, video game or popular television show? Why?
23. Would you rather never have to do chores or never have to go to school for the rest of your life? Why?
24. Would you rather be best friends with your favorite YouTuber or best friends with your favorite singer? Why?
25. Would you rather be forced to say everything that was on your mind or to never speak unless someone spoke to you?

Do you ever get discouraged or frustrated when students give one-word answers like “good” or yup”?

Open-ended questions of the day like the ones below are a fun way to help kids — especially middle school and high school students — go deeper.

Try them out! Students do get excited about what they’re learning. Sometimes you just need to reframe the questions to get more detailed answers.

1. Do you prefer in-person learning or remote learning? Why?
2. What would your campaign motto be if you ran for class president?
3. If you were in charge of the school schedule, what would you change?
4. Which part of the school day is your favorite? Why do you like it so much?
5. What's the most interesting thing you learned in school today (or this week)? Why?
6. Have you ever witnessed bullying in school? What happened? How did it make you feel?
7. What is the best part about working on group projects at school? Why do you enjoy this?
8. Do you think the school day should be longer or shorter than it is, or is it just right? Why?
9. What three things would you change if you were in charge of improving your school? Why?
10. If you were a teacher, and the kids in your class would not listen to you, what would you do?
11. What is the most difficult part of working with a group or team at school? How do you cope?
12. What subject in school do you like the least? What is it about that subject that you don't like?
13. If you could choose the uniforms that students wear at your school, what would they look like?
14. If you could start a club at school, what would the theme be? Describe what club members would do.
15. If you were in charge of the lunch menu in the school cafeteria, what would you add or remove? Why?
16. What have you learned in school that your parents didn't already know? How could you explain it to them?

Sprinkle these questions throughout your year to promote a healthy social-emotional learning environment.

1. What would your perfect after-school playdate be like?
2. What is the nicest thing a classmate has said to you? How did you respond?
3. Who is your best friend? What is it about that person that you like the most?
4. What would be your ideal birthday celebration? Describe what it would be like.
5. Have you ever felt left out by your siblings or the kids at school? What was that like?
6. If a new student joined your class, what could you do or say to help them feel welcome?
7. If someone wants to become your friend, what would be the best way for that person to let you know?
8. If you could spend a day with a character from a book, TV show or movie, who would you choose? Why?
9. Which one of your friends do your parents like the best? What is it about that friend that your parents like?
10. What are the best places for kids your age to make friends other than school? Why are these good options?
11. Have you ever made a special effort to include a classmate with your group of friends? How would you go about doing this?

In a diverse classroom, the concept of "family” carries many connotations, both positive and negative.

So, it’s important to be mindful of your unique group of students before posing a class-wide question that you know might cause discomfort.

1. What is something that makes your family special?
2. What is one “family rule” that you would change if you could?
3. What are some important ways kids can show respect to their elders?
4. If you could choose where your family lived next, what would it be like?
5. Describe spending a perfect day with your family. What would happen?
6. Which of your family members do you want to be like when you grow up?
7. In three words, how do you think your neighbors would describe your family?
8. What can you do to set a good example for younger members of your family?
9. If you could only use three words to describe your family, what words would you pick?
10. In what ways do your parents or other older family members help you to be successful in school?
11. Which family member(s) are you the most like? In what ways are you similar to that relative?
12. How do you show your parents or other grow-ups who take care of you that you appreciate them?
13. What are the most important things adult family members can do to make sure that kids know they are loved?
14. What's a family rule at your home that everyone has to follow? Do you agree or disagree that it should be a rule? Why or why not?
15. What is a rule that one of your friends has to follow at home that is not a rule in your house? Why do you think their family has that rule?

1. What is the best gift you have ever given?
2. What is the hardest thing about being a kid?
3. When was a time that you felt lucky or blessed?
4. When you you think a person becomes an adult?
5. What five words do you think most describe you?
6. If you knew you could not fail, what would you do?
7. What would you do if you could become invisible for one day?
8. What is something you would like to grow up to be famous for?
9. If you could give one gift to every child in the world, what would it be?
10. Are you a good friend? What makes a good friend? Why do you think so?
11. If you could live in any decade, which decade would you choose to live in?
12. What is the one rule you would make if the whole wide world had live by it?
13. What’s one invention you would come up with to make everyone’s life easier?
14. If you could change the ending of a book, series or movie, how would you change it?
15. If you lost one of your five senses, what do you think would be the hardest thing about it?
16. If you were stuck on a deserted island, what are three things you would want to have with you?
17. If you could meet someone from the past and share a meal with them, who would you choose?
18. How would the world be different if we could understand animals (or they could speak our language)?
19. What do you think will be the most useful when you are an adult based on what you’ve learned so far in life?
20. If you could travel back in time one to five years and visit the younger “you”, what advice would you give yourself?

Download the free question of the day for students PDF in one click.

If you go through all of the questions above or simply want to find more, there are some awesome question-of-the-day resources at your fingertips.

To give you an idea of the types of questions you can find using these online tools, we’ve added a list below!

ESL conversation starters

• How do you like to spend your free time?
• What kind of video game system do you have?
• Do you play, or want to learn how to play, any instruments?

Pre-made question wheel

• What are you most afraid of and why?
• Are books a waste of time? Why or why not?
• If you had a time machine, would you go to the past or the future? Why?

Would you rather question generator

• Would you rather wear no underwear or no socks for a year?
• Would you rather have neighbors who were noisy or neighbors who were nosy?
• Would you rather be a multi-millionaire in 1900 or a middle-class person today?

If you loved the questions above to get to know your students better (and to help your students get to know you), you’ll love our other blog posts like brain breaks for kids, icebreaker questions for kids and writing prompts for kids.

You can also check out Prodigy Education’s Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT) page for more freebies and printables like activity calendars, lesson plan templates and more!