I gave out interest inventories for four years before I used one.
They were good inventories. Favorite color, favorite book, what you want to be when you grow up, one thing you wish your teacher knew. The kids filled them in carefully in the first week, the way children do when everything is still new.
Then I put them in a folder in the bottom drawer, and the next time I opened that drawer was in June, when I was cleaning out the room.
I sat on the floor and read twenty-four of them properly for the first time. One boy had written that he wanted to be a marine biologist. I had taught that child for a year and never once handed him a book about the ocean.
The asking was never the problem. I had asked twenty-four children what they cared about and then filed the answers somewhere I would not look. A survey you never reopen is just a worksheet.
So here is what I ask now, why each question is on the page, and the part almost nobody writes about, which is what you actually do with the answers once you have them.
1. Ask Subject by Subject, Not Just What They Like
The standard inventory asks about the child in general. Favorite color, favorite food, hobbies. It is pleasant and it tells you almost nothing you can teach with.
The version that changed my planning asks the same kind of question separately about reading, about math, and about writing. Because a child is not one learner. A child can be confident in math and frightened of writing, and a general survey averages those into a shrug.
Ask about reading: what was the last book you liked, do you like reading at home, what makes a book boring. Ask about math: what part is easy, what part makes you nervous, do you like working alone or with somebody. Ask about writing: what do you like to write about, what is the hardest part of starting.
You will find out in week one that the child who never volunteers in math is not confused, she just hates being watched while she thinks. That is a seating decision and a questioning decision, and you now get to make both of them in September instead of discovering it in January.
2. The Four Questions That Earn Their Space
Every question on the page costs a child's attention, and in the first week their attention is not infinite. These four have paid for themselves in my room every year:
- What is something you are good at that I would not know about? This is the single best question on the page. You get the gymnast, the kid who fixes bikes, the one who looks after two younger brothers every afternoon
- What makes a school day a good day for you? Their answers are specific and small, and they are almost always achievable. Recess with a particular friend. Not being called on first. Finishing something
- What is hard for you at school? Ask it plainly. Children are far more honest on paper in August than they will be out loud in November
- What do you want me to know about you? Leave it wide open, and leave real space under it. Roughly one child in five will tell you something that reshapes how you handle them all year
Notice what is not on that list: favorite color. It is a warm-up question, not a teaching question, and one of those is plenty.
3. Ask One Thing About Life Outside School
Ask what they do after school, or what they did on the last weekend.
Not to be nosy. Because the child who is minding a toddler until six o'clock has a different homework life than the child who has a quiet desk and a parent checking it, and knowing which is which changes what you assign and how you react when it does not come back.
Keep it optional and keep it light. One question, one line, no follow-up if they skip it. A skipped question is information too.
The McREL Institute makes the case for interest inventories as an engagement tool rather than a getting-to-know-you nicety, and Differentiated Teaching has a good piece specifically on reading interest surveys.
4. Decide Now Where the Answers Are Going to Live
This is the step I skipped for four years, and it is the whole difference between a survey and a tool.
Before you hand the page out, decide where it goes when it comes back. Not eventually. That afternoon.
What has worked for me is a single binder with a divider per child, kept on the desk rather than in a cupboard, holding the inventory and anything else they wrote in week one. Some people prefer a folder per child, some photograph them and keep a folder on their phone. The system does not matter. Being able to reach it in ten seconds during a parent phone call does.
Then give yourself a reason to open it. Put a note in your planner for the second week of October that just says read the inventories again. October is when the honeymoon is over, the first hard conversations are happening, and you have forgotten most of what they told you in August.
5. Five Ways to Actually Use What They Told You
Specific uses, all of which take under a minute:
- Book choice. Match one child to one book based on what they wrote. Hand it to them personally and say you remembered. The effect of this is out of all proportion to the effort
- Word problems and examples. Use their real names and their real interests. A soccer problem for the soccer player takes no longer to write and lands completely differently
- The hard conversation. Before you call home about a problem, reread what that child wrote about what is hard for them. You will start the call somewhere better
- Report comments. Open the inventory first. It is the fastest route to a sentence that sounds like the actual child rather than a template
- Grouping. The alone-or-together answers on the math page are worth more than a personality quiz, because the child told you directly
None of this is a program. It is just refusing to let twenty-four honest answers sit in a drawer until June.
Frequently Asked Questions
When should I give the interest inventory? Day two or three, not day one. Day one they are still working out where the bathroom is. By day three they have relaxed enough to write something true.
How long should it take? Fifteen minutes. If it takes longer than that you have asked too much, and the answers get shorter as the page gets longer.
What about students who cannot write much yet? Ask the same questions out loud and scribe the answers, or let them draw. A younger child pointing at a picture of a book they liked is giving you the same information. Teach Starter has a K-2 version built on pictures and emojis if you would rather not build one.
Should I do it again later in the year? Yes, and it is worth doing. A short version in January tells you what changed, and children love being asked twice because it shows the first time was not a formality.
One More Thing Worth Saying
There is a version of this that is a nice first-week activity and there is a version that changes how you teach a particular child in March. The questions are almost identical. The difference is entirely in what happens after they are handed back in.
So if you only change one thing this year, do not change the questions. Change where the answers go.
If You Would Rather Not Build It From Scratch
Everything above works on lined paper with the questions written on the board. If you would rather have the pages already made, these are the two I use.
The Student Interest Survey pack is the subject-by-subject version from part one: two general student inventories plus separate reading, math and writing inventories, five in all. They are editable in PowerPoint, so you can swap in your own questions or change the wording for your grade level, which is the reason I still use them rather than a fixed printable.
The First Day and First Week of School Activities pack carries a general interest inventory alongside the rest of the week: the Find Someone Who icebreaker, All About Me organizers, a character traits page, a partner interview and a summer writing activity. If you want the whole first week rather than just the survey, start there.
Keep Going
First week of school activities that tell you something about your students, for the four activities that sit around this one.
The meet the teacher letter that does the talking for you, for the questions you ask the grown-ups.
