Best questions for elementary school student survey about group work

Here are some of the best questions for an elementary school student survey about group work, plus tips on how to create them. If you want to generate a smart survey with AI, Specific lets you build one in seconds—making the process fast and surprisingly insightful.

Best open-ended questions for an elementary school student survey about group work

Open-ended questions let students share what they really think—in their own words. You don’t box kids into limited choices, so you’ll catch important observations you might otherwise miss. These questions deliver especially rich insights when you want to know how students truly feel, what challenges they face, and how you can help them grow.

It’s worth knowing that open-ended questions can sometimes have higher nonresponse rates than multiple-choice (research by Pew shows open-ended survey items can have nonresponse over 18%, sometimes as high as 50%[1]). But when asked well, a majority of kids will give you comments worth gold.[2]

1. How do you feel when you work with others on a school project?

2. What do you like the most about working in a group?

3. What is something that makes group work hard for you?

4. Can you describe a time when group work went really well? What happened?

5. If you could change one thing about group work at school, what would it be?

6. How do you and your group members decide who does what?

7. What kinds of things do you want help with when working in a group?

8. How do you solve problems or disagreements in your group?

9. What have you learned from working with other students?

10. Is there anything you wish your teacher knew about how groups work together in class?

Best single-select multiple-choice questions for elementary school student survey about group work

Single-select multiple-choice questions shine when you need quick, quantifiable data. They're especially handy if you're aiming to benchmark progress, group preferences, or spot trends over time. It's often easier (especially for students) to pick from a set of options, and it keeps response rates high. According to research published in Anesthesiology, closed-format questions usually get more complete answers and are less likely to be skipped compared to open-ends[3].

Here’s how you can ask these types of questions:

Question: How much do you enjoy working in a group at school?

• I love it

• I like it

• It’s okay

• I don’t like it

Question: What is your favorite part of group work?

• Making new friends

• Learning new things

• Finishing tasks faster

• Other

Question: When you have a problem in your group, what do you usually do?

• Ask the teacher for help

• Try to solve it with group members

• Ignore the problem

• Other

When to follow up with "why?" After asking for a preferred choice (like favorite part of group work), following up with "Why did you choose that?" can spark deeper insights. For example—after "What is your favorite part of group work?" follow up with, "Why is that your favorite part?" This is often where the most interesting responses come out.

When and why to add the "Other" choice? Always add "Other" to allow students to give responses you didn’t anticipate. Following up with, "Can you tell me more about your answer?" often uncovers surprising insights that predefined options can’t capture.

Should you use an NPS question for elementary school student group work surveys?

Net Promoter Score (NPS) isn’t just for businesses. It’s a simple way to quantify student sentiment around group work using a single, familiar scale. Ask: "How likely are you to recommend group work to a friend at another school?" Students answer on a 0–10 scale, painting a quick snapshot of overall satisfaction—and even young respondents can answer easily. NPS is valuable when you want a clear metric to track over time or compare across classes. If you want an instant, prebuilt NPS survey, generate one here.

The power of follow-up questions

Follow-up questions are where conversational surveys truly shine. They take a basic answer and uncover the thinking, feelings, or needs behind it. We’ve built a whole feature around this—learn more in our overview of automatic AI follow-up questions.

Specific’s AI engine asks smart, contextual follow-ups in real time, just like a skilled teacher or facilitator. This means richer responses, more clarity, and less guesswork later. You won’t need to chase down students by email to clarify what they meant, and conversation feels more natural.

• Student: "Sometimes people don’t listen to my ideas."

• AI follow-up: "Can you share an example of when this happened? How did it make you feel?"

How many followups to ask? Usually, 2-3 followups per topic are plenty. It’s best to allow students to skip to the next question if they’ve already told you what you needed—Specific lets you set this easily in any survey.

This makes it a conversational survey: Dynamic followups turn a stiff form into a chat that’s enjoyable and engaging—leading to much better feedback.

AI-powered analysis, summarize, trends: Analyzing all these rich, open-ended replies used to be tough, but with AI survey response analysis, you can summarize patterns and spot trends in seconds—even when the data is mostly text. Explore how AI makes sense of even qualitative feedback without hours of manual work.

Automatic AI followup questions are a new concept—try generating an AI survey and see the difference for yourself.

How to prompt ChatGPT or another AI to generate great questions for your survey

If you want ChatGPT (or Specific’s AI) to do the heavy lifting, here’s how to maximize results. Start simple, then add more context as you iterate. Try these prompts:

Basic first prompt:

Suggest 10 open-ended questions for elementary school student survey about group work.

For even better results, give extra detail: who you are, your situation, and your goal—for example:

I am a 3rd grade teacher preparing a feedback survey for group projects. My students are 8-9 years old. I want questions that help me improve how I organize group work in class, and make students feel more comfortable sharing ideas. Suggest 10 open-ended questions.

After generating the initial questions, help AI organize things further:

Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.

Then focus in on what matters most to you:

Generate 10 questions for the categories "group work challenges" and "ways to make group work better".

What is a conversational survey (and why is AI survey generation different)?

Conversational surveys feel like a chat, not a test. Instead of marching through stiff questions, students (or any respondents) engage in a natural dialogue. AI survey generators, especially those like Specific, make this possible—delivering tailored questions, listening carefully, and digging deeper when an answer sparks curiosity. The result? More honest, nuanced, and complete feedback—even from younger students who might clam up on a traditional form.

Here’s a simple comparison:

Why use AI for elementary school student surveys? AI-powered conversational surveys lower the pressure, encourage more engagement—especially from younger respondents—and dramatically reduce the time it takes to get clear, useful insights. AI survey examples and AI survey generators open new possibilities for human-centered feedback on any topic, group work included. If you want the smoothest experience for creators and participants, Specific leads the pack—delivering feedback that’s both deep and easy to act on.

Want to know more about how to create surveys? Dive into our full how-to article on making elementary school group work surveys.

See this group work survey example now

Try your own survey about group work with just a few clicks—get richer feedback, real insights, and make group learning smoother for everyone. This is a faster, more engaging way to start meaningful conversations with your elementary school students.