A Quiz About Your School
A quiz about your own school, full of photos of its corners and people, makes a great open day, parents’ evening or assembly. Question ideas, consent, and running it.
By the Giga Quizzes team4 min read
In this post
Every school is full of stories: the corner of the playground where everyone meets, the teacher who has been there longer than anyone, the trophy in the hall that nobody remembers winning. A quiz about your own school, with photos of its buildings and its people, turns those stories into a game no ready-made quiz could match. It works for an open day, a parents’ evening, an end-of-year assembly or a staff party, and it gets better every year you run it.
Pick the occasion, then the questions
| Occasion | Who is playing | What to focus on |
|---|---|---|
| Open day | Visiting families who do not know the school | Places, facilities, a map to learn the way round |
| Parents’ evening | Parents of current students | This year’s projects, trips and achievements |
| End-of-year assembly | The whole school | Memories of the year, staff trivia, a word cloud |
| Staff party | Colleagues | School history, baby photos, who-said-it |
“Where in the school is this?”
The best question in any school quiz is a close-up photo of somewhere in the building: a corner of the library, the handle of the science lab door, the view from a top-floor window, a mural in a corridor. Students and staff walk past these places every day without really looking, and recognising them is surprisingly hard.
Make it a race: hide the photo under a grid of tiles that disappear a few at a time as the clock counts down. The room shouts out guesses as more of it appears.
Write the answers as specific places rather than room types, such as “Room 12, by the main stairs” or “the art room”, so the question rewards people who really know the building.
A map for visitors
If your school has a site plan, use it in a question where players tap the right spot: “Where is the music room?” or “Tap the oldest building on the site.” Mark the right area a little generously, so a tap on the edge of the right building still counts.
At an open day, this is more than a game. Visiting families learn their way round while they play, and remember the layout better for having found it themselves.
History in order
Every school has a story, and an ordering question tells it well: when it opened, when the sports hall went up, when the library moved, when the new building arrived. Players drag the moments into order on their phones.
The material is usually easy to find. The school archive, an old prospectus, a local history society, or simply the longest-serving member of staff will have more stories than you can use. Add the questions everyone wonders about: who the school is named after, what the building was before, what the motto means.
Photos of the school community
A school is its people, and photos of them make a quiz personal: a teacher’s childhood photo to guess, a project from this year to match to its class, an old team photo from the archive with a year to guess on a slider.
Before any photo of a student goes on screen
- Follow your school’s rules on consent. Most collect permission from families at the start of the year; use only students whose families agreed.
- Leave out anyone who would rather not appear on a big screen, whatever the form says.
- For staff photos, ask each person first, and let them choose the photo.
- Avoid names alongside photos of students in anything shared outside the school.
Staff trivia
Fun facts about the staff are always the most popular questions, as long as each one is collected beforehand with the person’s agreement. Use staff names as the answers.
- Which teacher once lived in Japan?
- Who has run a marathon?
- Which member of staff was a student at this school?
- Who can play the bagpipes?
End on a word cloud
A poll with no right answer is a lovely way to finish. Ask “What is the best thing about our school?” with typed answers, and the screen turns them into a word cloud, the most common words largest. It is the picture people photograph on their phones on the way out.
Running it for a crowd
Visitors and students type the room code at giga-quizzes.com/play, or scan the QR code on the screen. They need no app and no account, which matters at an open day where most players are visitors. Up to 500 people can join one game, enough for a whole-school assembly.
For a big room, teams make it better. Name up to six teams after houses or year groups, or, at a parents’ evening, after their children’s classes. Everyone still answers individually, every point counts for their team, and the game ends on a team podium.
Keep the set from year to year, change a few photos and questions each time, and share it with a colleague so it never depends on one person. The guides to hosting a live game and sharing a quiz cover each step.
Try it in Giga Quizzes
Free, in the browser, and nothing for your students to install. These guides show each step on the real screens.
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