Here are some of the best questions for an elementary school student survey about teacher helpfulness, along with tips on how to craft meaningful questions. You can instantly generate this type of survey with Specific and start collecting insights in seconds.
Best open-ended questions for teacher helpfulness surveys
We love open-ended questions for the depth they unlock—they help students express experiences in their own words and surface stories you’d miss with options alone. Still, open-ended questions take more effort and can have higher nonresponse rates (up to 50% in some cases for young respondents [1]), so balance them thoughtfully in your survey.
Here are 10 strong open-ended questions specifically for understanding teacher helpfulness:
Can you share a time when your teacher helped you with something difficult?
What does your teacher do that makes learning easier for you?
How does your teacher help you if you don’t understand a lesson?
What do you wish your teacher would do differently to help you more?
When do you feel most supported by your teacher?
How does your teacher make you feel comfortable asking for help?
If you could change something about how your teacher helps students, what would it be?
What’s something your teacher does that really motivates you?
How does your teacher encourage you to try your best?
Is there anything else you want to share about how your teacher helps you or your classmates?
For a more in-depth look at the value of open-ended questions in education surveys—and how to balance them—see our guide to building student surveys.
Best single-select multiple-choice questions for student insights
Single-select multiple-choice questions are fantastic when you need clear, quantifiable feedback—especially from younger students who might find it easier to pick a simple option than write a paragraph. These questions typically see an impressive nonresponse rate of just 1–2% [1], meaning you capture more complete data from the entire classroom.
Here are three effective multiple-choice questions for a teacher helpfulness survey:
Question: How often does your teacher help you when you ask for it?
Always
Most of the time
Sometimes
Rarely
Question: Which way does your teacher help you most?
Explaining things again
Showing examples
Listening to your questions
Other
Question: How easy is it for you to ask your teacher for help?
Very easy
Somewhat easy
Not easy
When to follow up with "why?" If a student chooses "Not easy" or "Rarely" in response, that’s a great moment to follow up. Asking, “Why is it not easy for you to ask your teacher for help?” uncovers barriers you might never have spotted in the numbers alone.
When and why to add the "Other" choice? “Other” opens the door to new ideas or forms of help you didn’t anticipate. Always follow up “Other” with a short text question like, “Can you describe the way your teacher helps you?”—this surfaces valuable feedback that closed choices can’t.
NPS-style question for measuring teacher helpfulness
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) question—traditionally used to measure loyalty—translates beautifully to student feedback, even with younger students. It’s incredibly simple: “How likely are you to recommend your teacher to a classmate who needs help?” (Scale: 0–10.) NPS provides a quantifiable snapshot of overall feeling, and lets you segment follow-up questions to better support students who score on the lower end. Check out our tailored NPS survey builder for elementary school students for an instant example.
The power of follow-up questions
Without follow-ups, you risk surface-level responses. Specific’s automatic AI follow-up questions intelligently probe unclear or interesting answers, collecting deeper insights in real time. This saves hours otherwise spent on back-and-forth emails, and helps make the survey feel natural—like a real conversation between the AI and the student.
Student: “My teacher helps sometimes.”
AI follow-up: “Can you tell me about a time when your teacher helped you, and a time when they didn’t?”
How many followups to ask? Two to three well-timed follow-ups are usually enough; Specific lets you set a maximum and will seamlessly move on once it gathers the needed details. This keeps the flow lively and respects students’ attention span.
This makes it a conversational survey—students feel heard, not interrogated, and are more likely to open up because the AI feels like an interested peer, not a faceless form.
AI-powered analysis, insight summaries: Even with lots of detailed, open-text replies, you can analyze all student feedback instantly using AI—see how in our guide to analyzing survey responses.
Trying out automated follow-ups is a game changer. We encourage everyone to experience this by generating their own survey—see how easy it is to get richer, context-filled responses.
How to prompt ChatGPT for better teacher helpfulness questions
If you want to craft your own survey or explore with AI tools like ChatGPT, start with direct, context-rich prompts. For example:
Start broad to explore ideas:
Suggest 10 open-ended questions for an elementary school student survey about teacher helpfulness.
But for even better results, give more context up front:
I am creating a conversational survey for elementary students to understand how helpful their teachers are. The goal is to find what helps kids most and what barriers they face. Suggest 10 open-ended questions that are clear and age-appropriate.
Then, categorize for clarity:
Look at the questions and categorize them. Output categories with the questions under them.
Next, double down where it matters—generate more focused questions for categories you want deeper insight on:
Generate 10 questions for the “Barriers to Asking for Help” category.
This “prompting workflow” yields a highly focused, rich set of questions tailored to your survey’s unique needs.
What is a conversational survey?
Conversational surveys turn feedback into a two-way chat, so students feel like they’re sharing with a classmate or friendly adult—not filling out a stiff form. Specific’s AI survey builder creates these surveys in minutes. Instead of manually copying/pasting questions or combing through responses later, the platform’s AI handles both creation and real-time conversation—adapting to how each child answers and probing for more when needed.
Manual Survey | AI-Generated Survey |
|---|---|
Traditional forms; static questions | Conversational, dynamic experience |
Requires manual writing and logic setup | Questions crafted and revised by AI in seconds |
Follow-ups require extra emails or phone calls | AI asks smart follow-ups automatically in real-time |
Responses must be read and summarized by hand | AI analyzes, summarizes, and categorizes responses |
Why use AI for elementary school student surveys? Because AI survey tools like Specific make it painless to create age-appropriate, engaging surveys—and even more importantly, they get more (and better) feedback thanks to smart conversational techniques. Each AI survey example is tailored to your topic, and the platform can edit any questions on the fly to fit your needs.
Get started today with our step-by-step article on building a survey for elementary school students. Specific offers best-in-class user experience and makes the whole process smooth and even fun for students and teachers alike.
See this teacher helpfulness survey example now
Get actionable insights on teacher helpfulness in minutes with a conversational survey that adapts to student responses and uncovers what matters most—no manual setup, just smart, AI-powered feedback you can use instantly.