Getting Student Attention, and Everybody Else's Too One way to get your students' attention is to plan a competitive event that appeals to them and everybody. This recounts one such event, a Rocket Competition. It happened that my sixth grade students never had flown a rocket, much less competed in flying them. So, naturally I had to plan it out over a longer period of time than just a week. I got permission to start a school identified rocket club. I developed lessons on rocketry and the history of rocketry. Given that the Columbia Space Shuttle had just recently disintegrated before our eyes as it re-entered the earth's atmosphere because of a hole in its wing, space was fresh on my students' minds. Artist rendition of Columbia STS disintegrating on reentry I remembered a small rocketry outing I put together several years before and used the concept for the Deady Rocket Science Club (The DRS Club for short). And I felt it would be a great learning experience