Kudos to you, V. You've obviously made their learning interesting and relevant, which is the holy grail of teaching if you ask me. I've been in a lot of different classrooms since I started teaching over here. I'm constantly amazed at how much evidence I see of teachers teaching to conventions rather than teaching to meet students' needs, and believe me, kiddos in North/East London (where almost all my work is) have plenty of 'em.

One of my friends had a pretty effective (for that class, at least - I think they were a little younger than yours, but still not the easiest lot) system for getting rid of the stupid questions: c 3 b4 me. Basically, the kids had to ask someone else at their table, someone else in their group and then someone else in a higher group before they were allowed to ask her.