I have an almost-9-year old dd who has the same challenge - and it's beyond frustating to deal with at times! I'm afraid I won't have any this-will-work type of advice for you, we're still working through it with our own dd, but fwiw, I agree with the suggestions for a full eval.
All children are different, so what we've discovered about our dd and what we are working on with her are of course not going to be necessarily relevant for your ds, but fwiw, these are a few of the things we've found in our journey:
1) Our dd doesn't appear to have a learning challenge *on the surface* (she's always been a high-achiever in school and she picks up math concepts uber-quickly - that's her area of strength). However, IQ testing revealed that she has one specific area that she has a large dip in ability in - it's related to associactive memory. We're still trying to figure out how this impacts her at school and in life, but when we look at what happens when she goes through that chain reaction of going from nice-as-can-be to blowing-her-top-and-not-coming-back... we are finding that it might be related to misunderstandings that might be linked back to her associate memory. She's also recently had a reading eval (because as she's gotten older, her reading ability seems to have lagged relative to what everyone expected it would be based on her verbal communication). Her eval was really wild - she was doing well across the board (and she's recently tested ahead of grade level by 2 years at school in comprehension)... but there was one specific area of her eval where she was scoring in the 5th percentile - just one *ONE* area... and we are still trying to figure out how that's impacting her schoolwork... but I suspect it's feeding into her frustration and anxiety. Things that are so subtle can impact a child in a large way, yet be very hard for someone outside looking in to see.
2) Our dd is into sports and likes being active. We've had her in an after-school sports activity (organized) every day after school this year. It's impacting her homework time - not great. BUT more importantly, since she's had this outlet for her energy, the number and duration of her tantrums has decreased significantly.
3) The tantrums and quckness-to-blow are much worse when she's hungry... and she eats a *ton*... and she needs to snack frequently. So... we try to keep her fed constantly!
4) This has nothing to do with our dd - but I would look closely at the amount of LA homework your ds has. Time spent on homework really stresses out my older ds (who has quite a bit of homework and who is also dysgraphic). Although your ds appears to not be struggling with his homework, do you know if it's taking him the same amount of time the teacher expects it to? If it's taking longer, is it taking longer for other kids too, or just your ds? Could you also perhaps post here a brief summary of the amount and type of homework he has in LA?
Best wishes,
polarbear
