Questions to Ask on Kahoot
Twenty question ideas to put in a Kahoot for a class, a team meeting, or a party, with notes on how each one plays in the room, how to write the wrong answers, and where the timer needs adjusting.
The questions
Open any question for the note
Which one of these four things have I never done?
Why ask it
The standard host opener, and it only works if the true items are duller than the invented one. Everyone picks the exciting option, gets it wrong together, and the shared error buys you attention for the rest of the game.
What time did the earliest riser in this room get up today?
Why ask it
Harmless, fast, and it produces one winner who becomes a character for the rest of the session. Cap the earliest option at something believable, or somebody claims four in the morning and there is no way to check.
Whose baby photo is this?
Why ask it
The strongest icebreaker on the list and the slowest to build, since it needs image slides and people who agreed beforehand. Use only people who are actually present: guessing about an absent colleague turns into commentary about them.
Where is everyone answering from right now?
Why ask it
Run it as a poll rather than a quiz, with four regions or four rooms as the options. The distribution tells everyone whether this is a local group with two remote stragglers or genuinely split, which changes how the rest of the session should be run.
How many of us have been part of this group for more than three years?
Why ask it
People guess low, and correcting them out loud is the useful part: it tells newcomers how much shared history is in the room. Give the options as bands rather than exact numbers so the answer stays defensible.
Which of these songs came out first?
Why ask it
Splits the room by age without asking anyone their age, and changes the tempo after a couple of content questions. Keep the release dates several years apart; two years is a coin flip and coin flips make the leaderboard meaningless.
Which of these four rules is genuinely in our handbook?
Why ask it
Works because real policies are stranger than invented ones, and people learn a rule while arguing about it. Check your wording against the actual document first, because somebody in the room will look it up mid-game.
Before we start: how confident do you feel about today's topic, one to four?
Why ask it
A poll with no right answer, which resets expectations for anyone who assumed everyone else already understood it. Show the results, since the point is the room seeing that most people picked two.
Which of these four statements about today's topic is the false one?
Why ask it
Better than a straight recall question because the wrong options force reasoning rather than memory. The failure mode is three obviously silly options: everybody scores, nobody learns, and the leaderboard stops separating anyone.
Which mistake do people make most often with this?
Why ask it
The answers double as a warning list, and the ones people choose show you where the group is confused. Build the options from actual errors you have seen, not hypothetical ones, or the question teaches nothing.
Which of these four steps has to happen first?
Why ask it
Sequence questions read badly on a small screen, so allow the full timer and keep every option under about six words. Check the order is genuinely fixed before you build the slide: if two steps can happen either way round, somebody will say so mid-game and they will be right.
What do you think the most common answer to the last question was?
Why ask it
Rewards paying attention rather than knowing things, which is how you stop one specialist running away with the leaderboard. It only works if you actually displayed the previous result rather than clicking past it.
Which of these four answers would get full marks?
Why ask it
Showing four attempts and asking which is complete teaches the standard faster than describing the standard. Make the near-miss genuinely close, because the argument about why it fails is the whole value of the slide.
Which term from last week does this definition belong to?
Why ask it
Definition-first is harder than term-first and exposes memorized labels with nothing behind them. If most of the room gets it wrong, that is your answer about whether to move on today.
What did you nearly pick before you changed your mind?
Why ask it
Best used as an open-ended slide straight after a question most people got wrong, while the near-miss is still fresh. The answers tell you which distractor was too plausible, which is worth fixing before you run this again.
What's the one thing you'd like explained again?
Why ask it
Anonymous typing gets you the questions nobody will raise a hand for. Expect one or two joke entries; ignore them and read out the repeats, because a topic named three times is your next ten minutes.
If we had ten spare minutes at the end, what should we spend them on?
Why ask it
A real decision rather than a quiz, which changes how seriously people answer. Only ask it if you will honor the result, since a poll you then override is remembered longer than the session.
What should the winning team be called?
Why ask it
Runs well as an open-ended slide in team mode and gives the tables something to do while scores are calculated. Have a rule ready for the entry you cannot read out, and move on quickly rather than negotiating with the room.
What's one thing you know now that you didn't at nine o'clock this morning?
Why ask it
A closing open-ended slide that quietly checks whether the session worked. Answers that all name the same fact mean you covered one thing well; blank entries mean you covered five things badly.
Which question in this quiz was unfair?
Why ask it
Ending by inviting complaint defuses the ones that would otherwise be muttered on the way out, and it gets you specific editing notes. Expect the hardest question rather than the ambiguous one, so read the reasons and not just the votes.
Building and running the game
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Writing questions that work on a phone
- Keep the question under about a line and a half. Anything longer gets skimmed while the timer runs, and people answer the shape of the question rather than the question.
- Four short options beat two long ones. If two answers need a clause each to distinguish them, the question belongs in discussion, not in a quiz.
- Wrong answers should be things a reasonable person might pick. Filler options turn a question into a reading-speed contest.
- Avoid 'all of the above' and 'none of the above'. On a four-color grid they read as tricks, and the arguments afterwards are never about the topic.
- Set the timer per question rather than leaving everything at twenty seconds. Recall questions need ten; anything requiring arithmetic or an image needs thirty or more.
Pacing a session
- 1Open with two questions about the room or the host. They are unlosable, they get everyone's phone connected, and they establish that this is not a test.
- 2Put your hardest content question third or fourth, while attention is highest.
- 3Break up any run of content questions with something light, especially after a question most people got wrong.
- 4Cap the set at ten or twelve questions. Attention drops off sharply after that and the last few get answered at random.
- 5Finish with an open-ended slide rather than the leaderboard, so the session ends on something people wrote rather than on who won.
The leaderboard is not the score you think it is
Points are weighted by answer speed, and streak bonuses compound, so one fast guesser can lead a game they understand less well than the person in fourth. If you are using a Kahoot to check understanding, look at the per-question report afterwards rather than the final standings, and consider turning points off entirely for a review session. If you are using it for fun, leave points on, but do not read out the bottom of the table.
Practicalities that cause trouble
- Decide the nickname rule before you start, and use the nickname generator with a group that will test you. Removing a player mid-game costs you two minutes and the room's attention.
- Team mode changes the game completely: fewer devices, more talking, slower rounds. Choose it deliberately rather than because the room is large.
- Read every question aloud as it appears. Some people are on a cracked phone screen at the back and cannot see the projector.
- Have one spare device. In any group of twenty, somebody's phone will not join, and the fix is lending a device rather than debugging the wifi.
- If you are reusing a quiz with the same group, change the order. People remember answer positions on the color grid better than they remember the answers.