them's fighting words

     Two fights/conflicts today during language arts. Bleah.
     It's already a struggle enough to get them focused. I fight the same battle when my kids return at 10:30 for a mere 30 minutes of social studies or science before we hustle off to lunch. I've realized that if I wait for them to quiet down completely, we can fritter away all 30 minutes. So I just plunge in, throw out a lot of "what are you supposed to be doing right now???" looks and reminders, and we actually get something done. I feel like I'm plowing along and dragging them through the lesson, but overall they do get the work done. So far, all we've been doing is tree-mapping  sections of our Social Studies text to gather info on old Hawaii for our language arts project. Basically, I read aloud, stopping after each paragraph to call on students to share what they think are key words and ideas. They copy down the tree map I write on the board. Going to have to think about how to set that half-hour up for learning and success when I need them to work on their own ...
     But back to the fights. Lion and Green started grabbing each other and I had to break it up. Lion claimed that Green was "irritating" him, so he ripped Green's paper. Then, an already upset Lion got into an altercation with Cleats. I decided that having 3 angry boys in one room was not going to work, so I sent Cleats to another room. While I am upset that this happened and wasted so much of our learning time, I'm not too surprised. Lion shared recently that mom is expecting baby #9. Lion craves attention, and this is the kind of behavior I saw in quarter 1, before I started taking him for weekly lunches. I think he's feeling attention-starved due to baby #9. Also, one of Lion's triggers is possessions. When I talked to him, he said Cleats has been bugging him for several days to hand over a prized Silly Band. The students are taking home a letter tomorrow informing parents that students cannot wear or carry Silly Bands in my room.
     Add to the chaos that Quarterback was being disrespectful to me/not following directions throughout the day, and left the usually sweet-tempered and focused Dazzle in tears because he kept touching a box she had in her desk. He started the morning by taking a scissors off my desk (without asking) and using it to saw and hack at some crystal he had brought to school. Ended up sending him to the counselors to talk, but I am still at a loss about how to help him. He can be the sweetest kid on Earth ... or the terror of the classroom.
    So glad that tomorrow's Friday.