Why Do Girls Hold Back Asking Questions In Class? A Teacher’s Observation and Small Tips
Tuesday 4th grade math, just after recess, there are goldfish crumbs scattered across half the desks and sunlight streaming through the smudged window above the bookshelf. I erase the last of the equivalent fraction examples from the whiteboard, wipe my hands on my jeans, and ask the standard question: “Any questions before you start the worksheet?”
The boys are already calling out before I finish talking. “Can I sharpen my pencil?” “Do we have to do the back side?” “Is there homework tonight?” I scan the room, and spot Mia in the second row, twisting her neon pink eraser so much the rubber is peeling off in little strips. Her notebook has three attempts at the practice problem scribbled out, crossed through with heavy pencil lines. I hold eye contact for a second, and she drops her gaze to her desk, picking at a loose thread on her sweater. When the bell rings for lunch, everyone rushes out, but she lingers by my desk, sneakers scuffing the baseboard, and whispers that she didn’t get how I worked the second example.
This isn’t a one-off. I’ve been teaching 4th grade for eight years, and I’ve come to expect this pattern: almost all whole-class questions come from a small group of boys, while most girls wait to ask one-on-one, or don’t ask at all. Last month at parent-teacher conferences, Lila’s mom told me Lila rambles for 20 minutes straight at home about why Pluto shouldn’t be a planet, asks a hundred follow-up questions about every documentary they watch, but her progress note says she rarely participates in class discussions. When I pulled Lila aside after conferences and asked her about it, she just shrugged and said, “What if my question is dumb? Everyone else gets it, so I must be the only one who doesn’t.”
I started keeping a tiny note in my planner last year, tracking how many questions I got from whole-group discussion versus anonymous sticky notes after lessons. Over one month, 78% of whole-group questions came from boys, even though my class was split almost evenly, 14 girls and 13 boys. When I had everyone write any question they had on an unsticky note, no names required, 62% of the questions came from girls. They have the questions. They just don’t want to ask them out loud.
I’ve tried a lot of small shifts over the past two years, and most of them have made a difference, no big curriculum overhauls required. The first change I made was ditching the open “any questions?” prompt at the end of lessons. That open invitation always goes to the fastest, loudest person in the room, and most girls have already decided they don’t want to be that person. Now, after every lesson, I give everyone 30 seconds to write any question they have on a blank sticky note, no name needed, and stick it on the whiteboard by the door. I answer the most common ones first before we move on. That one change got me more real questions from girls than any other strategy I’ve tried.
Next, when we do whole-group question time, I don’t wait for people to raise their hands first anymore. I keep a quick checklist on my clipboard of who has shared that week, and I say, “I’m going to call on three people who haven’t shared a question yet this week, then we can open it up.” It’s not a call-out, it’s just an expected turn. I realized before I started this, I was only calling on the small group of girls who already volunteered all the time, and the rest just got stuck in the quiet, forever.
The small change that surprised me the most was stopping the over-the-top praise I used to give quiet girls when they finally worked up the courage to ask a question. I used to gush, “What an amazing question! I’m so glad you asked that” without even thinking about it. But what that does is makes it feel like a big surprise that she asked, like it’s an exception to the rule. Now I just answer their question the same way I answer a boy’s. If multiple people had the same question, I say, “Actually, two other people wrote this on their sticky notes today, so a lot of us are wondering that.” No fanfare, just normal.
I share these tips with parents at conferences too, and there are small, easy shifts they can do at home as well. I tell them to stop asking “Do you have any questions?” and instead ask, “What’s one thing that felt confusing today, even a little bit?” It’s a lot harder to answer “nothing” to that question. One mom told me she started doing this at dinner, where everyone has to share one confusing thing from their day, no fixing it allowed, just sharing. Her 10-year-old daughter, who never talked about school, brought up a math question she’d been too embarrassed to ask me for two weeks.
It’s not like this fixes everything. Last week, we had a guest speaker come in to talk about local wildlife, and all the girls went quiet again. Even Mia, who has a pet fox stuffed animal on her desk and talks about foxes all the time at recess, didn’t write a single sticky note. Some girls will always prefer to ask one-on-one, or not ask at all, and that’s okay. The point isn’t to turn every quiet girl into a loud, outgoing class participant. The point is to give them a way to get their questions answered without making them perform confidence they don’t have yet.
I saw Mia after school yesterday, waiting for her mom by the bike rack, and she was telling her friend about a question she asked in science that day. She wasn’t whispering, she was grinning, waving her lunch box around as she talked. It’s small, but it’s enough for now.
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