Things are back to normal with most of my classes (including 7th period). Class has been pretty good this week due to our new unit on space. It's held most of each class' attention and I get bombarded with questions everyday, which I find loads of fun. Part of science education is allowing and encouraging inquiry so I have no problem entertaining the questions the students have about space. Tomorrow we are debating Pluto's status as a planet and the debate fits quite well with a few of my nature of science objectives--formulating inferences from scientific data and understanding the process of peer review, et al. Any time we can get "making inferences" and "drawing conclusions" into our lesson plans the better as these are skills that need strengthening for the reading test in the spring.

More of my classes are buying into my class rewards system. Instead of rewarding efficiency and staying on task with minutes for preferred activity time on Fridays I reward the classes with class money (the minutes were replaced with points). The classes can choose to spend part of their money or save it each week. The money can buy a whole list of rewards such as making me learn a dance they know, dying my hair, shaving my head, dressing like a student, etc. Incentives don't always have to be something that costs money (like candy); instead, they can be crazy things only you would do. The whole point is that the class feels special because you are doing something for them. I am dying my hair red and blue this friday for my first period class but I am washing it out during my prep period as it's only for them. Unfortunately my 3rd and 7th period classes haven't bought into the system so I am not sure what I will do to either take a different route for classroom management or to get them invested in the system.

To explain more on 3rd period, the students are quite active and invade each other's personal space during class. This could be something like kicking the bottoms of desks, stretching their arms and putting their hands into each other's faces, etc. Luckily, I only have 7-10 students in the class so tomorrow I am going to create an area in the room where the disruptive students are spread out at least 8-10 ft from each other. This should cut down on students bothering each other or at least allow me to better target the ones that are starting the trouble. We'll see how this plan goes.

The semester is almost over teaching wise. We have a review on Thursday, test on Friday and then another week of teaching. After that, we have a week of 9 weeks test and then break. Luckily, I know my content well (space) for the last teaching week so it should be smooth in terms of planning and teaching.