How This Or That High School Questions Actually Works in Practice
This Or That High School Questions is a party-style icebreaker activity you'll see at orientation events, dorm meetups, and homeroom warm-ups. Two options are presented and students pick one. It sounds simple because it is simple, but the execution matters more than people realize. I've run these sessions in classrooms where kids barely talk to each other and situations where they end up in heated arguments over whether pizza or tacos is superior. The difference is usually in how the questions are framed and how you handle the responses.
This Or That High School Questions You Can Use Tomorrow
Here's what works. Keep your categories tight. Mix easy questions with slightly tougher ones so the energy builds rather than starting at maximum intensity immediately. If you open with something like "cabin fever or airplane anxiety," half the room is already laughing and the other half is figuring out what the question even means. Start with the mechanic first. Tell them to stand on one side of the room for option A and the other for option B. Watch what happens when you ask "texting or calling." You get some people standing in the middle. You get some people pointing at their friend. You get the kid who says both and won't pick a side. Let them be in the middle. That's data too. A realistic edge case I dealt with recently: running this with a group of juniors and seniors during a team-building event. The questions were fine for the first twenty minutes, then someone asked "deep friends or popular friends" and the room went completely silent for about twelve seconds. Not awkward silence. Actual silence. People were processing. I just let it hang there instead of rushing to fill it, and the next three questions unlocked a real conversation about loyalty and social circles that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise.
The questions themselves fall into tiers. Low stakes questions get everyone moving and warming up. Medium stakes questions create actual opinions. High stakes questions create the moments people remember. A solid set looks something like this: Low stakes: mornings or nights, beach or mountains, sweet or savory, video games or board games, cats or dogs. Medium stakes: group project or solo project, studying at home or at school, reading the book or watching the movie, writing by hand or typing.
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High stakes: tell the truth even if it hurts or stay quiet to protect feelings, follow the rule or break it for a good reason, be the leader or be the follower. The last category is where the room either opens up or shuts down completely. It depends entirely on the group dynamic and how much trust exists between the participants. If you haven't built any rapport, stick to medium stakes. If you have, the high stakes questions will give you more material for discussion than anything else you could assign. One thing beginners miss: the value isn't in the answers. It's in the explanation. After someone picks a side, ask one person from each side why they chose it. Not everyone. One. You'll get three-minute debates instead of thirty-second answers. That's where the bonding happens. Skip the why and you're just playing a game. Include the why and you're running a social exercise.
Another nuance people overlook is the pacing. If you move too fast, nothing registers. If you move too slow, the energy dies and you're back to kids checking their phones. A good rhythm is roughly forty-five seconds per question for low stakes, ninety seconds for medium, and up to two minutes for high stakes. Count it out in your head if you need to. I timed a session once and was consistently cutting explanations short because I'd rather have five good conversations than twelve shallow ones. The biggest downside to this activity is that it can flatten personality differences. Extroverts dominate every round. Introverts nod and stay on their side. To counter this, I sometimes use a workaround where I ask people to pair up with someone they don't normally talk to and explain their choice together before sharing with the group. It changes the dynamic completely. The quiet kid gets a voice through someone else, and the loud kid has to listen instead of perform. If you want to adapt this for larger groups or virtual settings, the core mechanic stays the same. Polls, chat reactions, breakout rooms, or just shouting answers. The interaction level drops depending on your method, but it still works. Just adjust your question selection accordingly. Online groups need lower stakes questions because there's less accountability and people are more self-conscious typing their choices than standing on a side of the room.
Download links aren't really necessary here because the questions are generatable on the fly. Search for this or that questions high school and you'll find dozens of curated lists. The lists are mostly interchangeable. What makes yours different is the delivery and the follow-up questions you ask after the initial choice. Print a few on cards if you want structure. Keep them in your pocket if you prefer to read off your phone. Both work. I've done both and the results depend on how engaged you are, not how the questions are stored.
