Friday, October 19, 2012

The Competition

The lesson plan said that the best behaved class of the day would get a reward. I normally rank the classes in my note for the day, so I didn't have to change anything I did. But I did need to mention this to the classes.

8th graders. Science. They had a lab write up to finish, a review worksheet, and some random questions to do. And they did it. They talked, but it wasn't a silent type of assignment, so I wasn't too concerned.

3rd and 4th periods were neck and neck. They were both talkative, but they were both on task.

(2nd period took themselves out of competition after one boy used a racial epithet while talking about a girl's hair. It was way over the top and completely unnecessary. And it was kind of how that whole class period went.)

Then 5th period arrived. I explained about the ranking. They asked if working silently would get them the win. Well, of course.

They tried. They failed, but they tried to work quietly. What they succeeded in doing was in keeping the noise level lower (considerably lower) than both periods 3 and 4. And I told them when they left that if 6th period worked silently, they'd lose. But at that moment, they were in 1st place.

I explained the situation to 6th period. They attempted to quiet themselves. And it worked for about five minutes.

5th period for the win.

I wonder what their prize is going to be.

By my post counter, it looks like this is my 1000th post. Wow. I should have a contest or something. Ideas?  

4 comments:

  1. It's always fun to watch them try to be quiet. I played Quakers Meeting with a group of my students once, just for fun. They didn't make it thirty seconds.

    Hope 5th period gets a cool prize!

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  2. Congratulations on 1000 posts! That's a huge milestone.

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  3. 1000 posts?! Holy Cow!

    Congrats to the winners :)

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  4. 1000 posts??? Wow! Amazing! When did you begin blogging?

    Sounds like such a strange sub day. Classes can vary so much in the same grade for the same subject.

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