Some teachers like to start the school year off with a series of fun poll questions, as a great icebreaker to help the teacher and the students begin to learn more about each other, get shy students to open up, and generally boost engagement. In the past, it used to be half a sheet or so of paper, with questions such as “What do your parents do?”, “What would you like to do when you grow up?”, “What’s your favorite subject?”, or “If you had to live on a desert island, what one thing would you like to have with you?”, which the teacher would type up and print for the whole class.
While the principle remains the same, times and methods have changed! Today, interactive online polls can help make this moment of social exchange even more fluid, instantaneous, lively, and fun. They are a great way to draw the attention of a class, of a new team, or of company or business meeting participants, and turn a formal exercise into a fun and unifying social moment and a great opportunity to learn and share.
The answers can help students, meeting participants and office colleagues understand each other and make connections between them, helping them to work well together in a team from day one. Simply put, they bring people together. Live polls like these can also introduce a topic informally, boosting engagement before going on to tackle more detailed content later on.
While plenty of tools make it easy to create interactive polls, engaging your audience from the get-go requires the right spark. Our selection of fun and funny poll questions will help you kick things off with your students, colleagues, or team.
Why add fun questions to your poll?
People will tend to have 2 different types of reactions to polls:
- “I don’t care, and, anyway, what’s the point?”
- “For once, someone’s asking my opinion, and I’m going to give it.”
To encourage the second type of reaction in your audience, rather than the first, it is important to present your poll in a catchy format. Adding fun questions to your poll will boost your chances of provoking a positive reaction of surprise, amusement, enthusiasm and plenty of interesting answers!
How to add fun questions to your poll
Depending on your audience and the degree of seriousness you want to give to your poll, you can:
- Add fun, funny and random questions to an otherwise normal or serious poll on a certain topic. For instance, add a fun question between every 4 or 5 serious questions just to liven things up a bit.
Example:
- What’s your name?
- What career are you hoping to go into?
- What is the snack food that will keep you going through any difficult time?
- What is your academic background?
- What is the thing that most annoys you about a family member or someone you love?
2. Offer multiple-choice poll questions with one funny answer among other more serious ones (we see this strategy used more and more).
Example:
What are your favorite pet animals?
- Cats
- Dogs
- Guinea pigs
- Birds
- Octopuses (being so practical to take out on a walk)
3. Offer a mostly offbeat poll, with plenty of fun questions, which nonetheless allows you to learn more about each person in your audience.
Example:
- What is something in everyday life that particularly annoys you but no-one else will tend to notice?
- At what age did you realize that you probably weren’t going to get your dream job?
- Do you sing under the shower?
- What is a totally taboo topic of discussion in your family, social circle or group of best friends?
Create your first quiz in 2 minutes
Polls, quizzes, word clouds: over 20 question types to get your audience interacting.
“What do you prefer?” poll questions
- Do you prefer to be called, texted or sent voicemail?
- What’s the best social media platform? Do you prefer Tik-Tok, Facebook or Instagram?
- Do you prefer to be woken up by music, sunlight or a really loud “beep-beep-beep”?
- Do you prefer that no-one notices you, or that everyone finds you instantly likeable (even people you can’t stand)?
- What is the best time of day? Do you prefer the morning or the evening?
- Do you prefer team sports or individual sports?
- If you could choose to live in the city center or the countryside, what would you prefer?
- Would you prefer to work in an office, or to work from home?
“On a scale of one to ten” poll questions
- On a scale of one to ten, how happy are you to be here today?
- On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your attractiveness?
- On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your teacher?
- On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your ability to work in a team?
“Yes or no” poll questions
- Do think you’d be able to survive alone in the wild?
- Do you think you have an obligation to be friends with your colleagues?
- Should we reinstate the death penalty for people who put the milk before the cereal in their breakfast bowl?
- Do you like roller-coasters?
- Does anything good ever come from work meetings?
Multiple-choice poll questions
What do you think of Amazon?
- Something extremely practical
- One of the foundations of modern society
- A crime against ecology and humanity
- A Netflix competitor among many others
If there were a zombie invasion, how many days do you think you’d be able to survive?
- 3 days: the time to hide in a corner and die of starvation
- Less than 2 hours: I’d die of a heart attack as soon as I met my first zombie
- Years: with a good hideout and unlimited food and ammo, I’d die of old age
How many letters do you write by hand a year?
- I always write by hand, and I hate emails
- More than 3 a year
- More than 10 a year
- Just one: a Christmas card to my gran
What was the worst disaster for humanity?
- The break-up of ABBA Disney’s takeover of Star Wars
- The invention of the sleeveless down jacket
- Season 8 of Game of Thrones
What is your favorite urban legend?
- The White Lady
- The Loch Ness Monster
- The Yeti Girl-boy friendships
If you could erase one invention from human history forever, what would it be?
- The electric scooter
- The atomic bomb
- The internet
- The hair straightener
“For or against?” poll questions
- For or against electro dance?
- For or against Tik-Tok?
- For or against Instagram?
- For or against the sandals-socks combo?
- For or against mullets?
- For or against work meetings?
Open-ended poll questions
Open-ended poll questions are a great way to leave respondents free to give any answer they choose, but they should be well focused enough to get short responses. In fact, respondents are more inclined to click on an answer from a given choice, or rather give a short, one or two-word answer, than share long, detailed answers:
- What is one thing you could never live without?
- What is your favorite video game of all time?
- What is your favorite snack?
- What is your favorite streaming service?
- What is your favorite Disney character?
- What is the best movie you’ve ever seen?
- What is the most stylish imaginary animal?
- Which mythological character do you like the most?
- What do you love more than people?
- What is a company, business or brand that you love or hate?
- What do you love or hate about social media today?
- What do you feel is best for engagement, an Instagram post or a story?
To learn more about your respondents, open-ended questions also work very well in a confession book format:
- If you were a work of art, what would it be?
- If you were a chess piece, what would it be?
- If you had to be reincarnated as an animal, what would it be?
- If a movie star were to play you in a movie of the story of your life, who would you like it to be?
10 random poll questions, to add a touch of goofy humor
- If you had to choose one celebrity to do the voiceover of your life, who would it be?
- Aside from your cell phone, what item in your daily life do you know most intimately?
- When you get dressed in the morning, do you feel you do it more for yourself or more for others?
- How many times a day do you think about the Roman Empire?
- If you had to get rid of a dead body, how would you go about it?
- What is a spelling mistake that drives you crazy?
- What book from your childhood do you feel you could you reread over and over again?
- Do you think reptilians are in control of the world?
- Do you know how to sew or crochet?
- Do you have an unusual ability? What is it?
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