14 Questions to Ask Instead of "How Was School Today?"
"How was school today?" gets you "fine." These questions get you something you can actually work with: whether a kid is thinking with AI, or just accepting what it hands them.
Why the question matters more than the answer
A closed question gets a closed answer. That has always been true. What is new is what is at stake: kids are forming their habits of trust, verification, and curiosity at the exact moment AI makes it easiest to skip all three.
The questions below are not about catching kids using AI. They are about finding out whether they are still doing the thinking that AI cannot do for them: noticing, doubting, retrying, wondering why.
For parents
- What did the AI say today, and did you believe it right away or check it?
- Did anything you used AI for today turn out to be wrong, half-wrong, or just not quite right?
- What's something you figured out today without asking an AI or a grown-up first?
- If you had to explain why the AI gave that answer, what would you guess?
- What's a question you asked today that nobody, not even AI, could really answer?
- Did you change anything about how you asked for help today after the first try didn't work?
- What did you do today that felt slow and hard, but was worth doing slowly?
For educators
- Where did a student accept the first answer today, AI-generated or otherwise, and where did someone push past it?
- What's a question a student asked this week that you couldn't have predicted from the lesson plan?
- Which assignment this week rewarded a good guess over a good process, and how would you redesign it?
- What did a student get wrong in a way that taught them more than getting it right would have?
- Where did AI shortcut a skill you actually wanted them to struggle with?
- What's one thing you saw a student do today that no AI tool could replicate?
- If a student used AI on this task, what would still be theirs to own?
You do not need all fourteen. Pick one question from your list and ask it for a week before swapping it for another. The goal is a habit of noticing, not a script.
What you're listening for
Not the right answer. The presence of a process: a kid who paused, doubted, tried again, or asked "but why" before accepting what AI told them. That process is the actual skill. Everything else is content.
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