Questions to Ask Special Needs Students
Questions for teachers, aides and support staff getting to know a student with a disability, at the start of the year or before a planning meeting. They cover how the student learns, what help works and what embarrasses them, sensory and pacing needs, friendships, and what they want said about them in a room full of adults. Adapt the wording, the format and the number of questions to the student in front of you.
20 questions, each with the reason to ask it · includes a conversation guide
The questions
Open any question to see why it works.
- 1
What do you want me to call you?
Ask this rather than reading it off a file. Students often have a name they use with friends that differs from the one on the register, and for some the answer is a pronunciation correction they have given up making. It takes ten seconds and it is the first evidence that you ask instead of assume.
- 2
What are you good at that I probably do not know yet?
Most adults in the building already know what this student finds hard, because that is what the paperwork records. Starting with capability changes who is the expert in the conversation, and the answer often gives you an interest you can build tasks around later.
- 3
What is your favourite part of the school day?
Concrete and easy, and the answer is frequently not a lesson: it might be the walk between buildings, a particular adult, or the twenty minutes before the bell. Whatever they name is a resource you can protect when the day goes badly.
- 4
What is the hardest part of the day?
Expect transitions, corridors, lunch, or the last hour rather than a subject. Difficulty in school is usually located in unstructured time rather than in academic work, and that is precisely the part no support plan describes.
- 5
Where do you like to sit, and why?
The why is what you need. Near the door, at the back, away from the window and next to a particular person are four completely different requests, about escape, visibility, distraction and safety. Honour the reason rather than the seat if the seat is impossible.
- 6
Is anything in this room too loud, too bright, or too much?
Naming three categories gets answers that an open question does not, because students rarely think to report the environment at all: they assume everyone experiences the fan, the strip light, the display wall and the hand dryer the same way they do. Fixes are often cheap once you know.
- 7
How do you want me to ask if you need help?
Being asked loudly, in front of everyone, is the reason many students refuse support they actually want. Agree a private signal or a form of words. This one question prevents a large share of the refusals that get recorded as defiance.
- 8
What kind of help actually helps, and what kind makes it worse?
The second half is the part nobody asks. Common answers: do not sit next to me the whole lesson, do not do it for me, do not explain it again the same way, do not stand behind me. Students can usually be very precise here if they believe you will act on it.
- 9
Do you take instructions better if I say them, write them, or show you?
Offering three options gets a usable answer where how do you learn best gets a shrug. Then check it against what you observe, because students often name the format they have been told they should prefer rather than the one that works.
- 10
When you are stuck, what do you do?
The answer describes their actual coping strategy, which may be asking a friend, guessing, going quiet, copying, or leaving. Anything that looks like avoidance is worth knowing about without treating it as misbehaviour, because it tells you what happens in the minutes before you notice a problem.
- 11
How will I know you need a break?
Agree the sign in advance and agree that it always works. A break request that gets negotiated the first time it is used will not be used again. Ask what they need the break to include, since leaving the room and putting their head down are different requests.
- 12
What do you want to happen if you have to leave the room?
Covers the exit, the return, and whether anything gets said in front of the class. Students often care far more about walking back in than about walking out, and having a rehearsed re-entry removes most of the drama from it.
- 13
Is there something you can do at home that you do not get to do here?
Frequently produces something real about independence: making food, looking after an animal, using a device, going places alone. Skills are often scaffolded much more heavily at school than at home, and the gap is worth closing in the school's direction.
- 14
Who do you spend lunch with?
Ask plainly and listen for the shape of the answer rather than the names. Nobody, a supervised room, or an adult are all common and none of them appear in academic records. Social isolation is the outcome most likely to be missed and least likely to be volunteered.
- 15
Is there anyone in this class you would like to work with more?
Gives you a seating and grouping decision that costs nothing and can matter enormously. It also surfaces the reverse: if the answer names someone to avoid, you have learned about a dynamic you were probably not going to see.
- 16
What do teachers do that you wish they would stop?
You have to be able to hear the answer without defending yourself, or you will not be told the truth twice. Common replies are about being singled out, having work read aloud, being praised for ordinary things, and being asked questions in front of the room.
- 17
What do people assume about you that is not true?
This is where students say the thing they have been carrying: that they are not listening, that they do not care, that they cannot read, that they are younger than they are. It is often the single most useful sentence in the conversation, and it belongs in the plan.
- 18
What do you want to be able to do by the end of the year that you cannot do now?
Asks for a goal in the student's own currency. Their answer may be practical rather than academic, and it may be more ambitious than the targets written for them. Either way, a goal a student chose is worked at differently from one they were given.
- 19
In your meeting, what do you want said about you, and what do you want left out?
Students are discussed in review meetings far more often than they are consulted about them. Asking for their version, including what they would rather adults did not read out, is the practical beginning of self-advocacy and takes very little time.
- 20
If you could change one thing about school, what would it be?
A wide closing question that lets them say something you did not think to ask about. Take the answer seriously even when it is unachievable, because the reason behind an impossible request is usually achievable in some smaller form.
Running the conversation
Practical guidance for the conversation itself.
Setting it up
Setting it up
- Do it away from the class and away from a desk with a form on it. A walk, a shared task, or sitting side by side removes most of the interview feeling.
- Say why you are asking and what you will do with the answers, including who else will hear them. Students give safer answers when they do not know where the information goes.
- Pick five or six questions, not twenty. A short conversation you repeat monthly beats one long one in September.
- Give the questions in advance if the student needs processing time. Being handed a question cold is a disadvantage that has nothing to do with knowing the answer.
- Offer more than speech: pointing, writing, drawing, choosing from cards, thumbs up and down, or answering later by message. The format should never be the barrier.
Wording that gets real answers
Wording that gets real answers
Two options beat an open question
Would you rather I write it on the board or on your sheet is answerable. What do you need is not, for most students, because it asks them to design the support as well as receive it.
Ask about the last time, not the usual
How often does that happen invites a guess. When did it last happen, and what did you do, produces a specific event with a place and a person in it, which is what you can actually act on.
Avoid asking why they did something
Why questions about behaviour are heard as accusations even when they are not meant that way, and the honest answer is often I do not know. Ask what was happening just before instead.
Do not ask about the diagnosis
You need to know how the school day works for this student, not what their condition is called or how it was arrived at. Any student who wants to talk about the diagnosis will raise it themselves.
What to do with the answers
What to do with the answers
- Change one thing within a week and tell the student that is why you changed it. Nothing else establishes that answering was worth the effort.
- Where you cannot do what they asked, say so directly and say why, then offer the nearest thing you can do. Silence gets read as no.
- Put their own words into the plan, in quotation marks, rather than a professional paraphrase. Their sentence will carry further in a meeting than your summary of it.
- Check anything sensitive before repeating it to parents or colleagues. Trust ends the first time a student hears their answer read back to a room they did not expect.
- Ask again in the spring. Preferences change with the term, the class, the friendships and the timetable, and last September's notes go stale faster than most files suggest.