My DS's class (Year 4) has been banned from playing Tag a few weeks before Xmas because one boy in the class found it difficult / was being left out. All the other classes are allowed to play Tag. He's a nice enough kid but is generally disruptive in class, seems to have some problems socialising and generally annoys a lot of the other boys. I don't know whether there are particular issues more than that. Now they have designed another game which sounds v similar to Tag but have called it something else, been playing it happily enough since start of term until this week, when something has gone wrong, said boy has had a playground meltdown and class teacher says she's about to ban this game too. This is a school that doesn't allow ball games.
What's reasonable in this situation and what should school be doing? Do 8 year old boys need to run around like mad at playtime and blow off steam? Should they have some more structured play? Should teacher be trying to get them to sit and talk to each other about the playing problems? What would best practice be? Do teachers even get taught this stuff? (Teacher is generally v good but is newly qualified and maybe lacking in experience.)