5th grade- a whole new world

This week I have been teaching full time. It has been an interesting week with MANY learning experiences. My cooperating teacher, Kate,was sick the beginning of the week, So she has only been in the classroom for 1.5 days so far. But, she is feeling better and it is great to have her back, giving me advice and support.
Wednesday was hump day. I generally look at hump day as a fun thing, "Yay!We are half-way through the week!" However, this week, it was more of a "Oh no, I am only half-way there!"
On Wednesday...spit balls. Do I need to explain any further? Okay, well, it is complicated. While I was courageously trying to help the students understand the concept of ordering fractions, several of my student's brains were else where. (I know, surprise, surprise!) I could sense that something was going on throughout the lesson, but I couldn't figure it out. Turns out, every time I turned my back to write down a problem, some of the students were blowing and throwing paper balls at each other. I got down to the bottom of the issue and discovered that this fun game that started at recess had continued in the classroom. I asked the class to be honest and after several discussions, I had 5 culprits.
So, today the students faced their consequences which include apology notes, a paragraph on respect, and time out of their recess and lunch breaks. One of the apology notes said, "Dear Miss. crued I am sorry what happen yesterday and the next time I will not do it again the next time I will be respefull." I couldn't help but laugh at that one. Apparently he hadn't seen my name written out before.
As frustrating as it was, I can now add "dealing with spit balls" to my teacher tool box.

Another thing happened today that made me laugh pretty hard. Some of the boys were a little wound up in Library, which is the last class on Thursdays. I caught one of the boys, who is a leader in the class, pulling up his track pants almost to his armpits. At first I laughed, but then I started to see other boys doing the same thing, so I put a stop to that. They thought they were pretty funny. What I don't understand is what made them think of doing that? Haha, another memory from the world of 5th grade.