Need assistance from ELA teachers...

Hi everyone! So this might be a dumb question or big ask, but I need some help here...

I've been an art teacher for 6 years at a school with limited resources. As a result, we have poor staff retention and subs avoid our school. I have been given the duty of covering the same 7th grade ELA class every day, because the teacher moved to online learning. I am an art teacher, but I love reading and writing- I know this area well, but I need some advice here.

The class I'm in has spent the last two weeks on Lexia, as there were no long term sub plans left by the other teacher. They are apparently "below grade level" in terms of reading/writing, but they need to prepare for state testing. I spent the last week looking at different resources on TPT and Education . com, and I have found a bunch of worksheets and activities of various levels.

I Need to know: what would you do if you had to 1. figure out, generally, the average performance level of a class of kids in ELA and 2. get started with basics of writing/reading comprehension with hopes of writing short persuasive passages by the end of march? I have found a variety of worksheets and activities but I’m not sure what to start with or what order to put them in, in general.

Other info, there are 12 kids in the class (such a big plus), BUT they have behavior issues in terms of volume/pestering eachother and there are several kids in the class who don’t get along. We have 30 minutes together every day with access to computers (but I want to keep them off the computers if at all possible). The stuff I have printed so far includes: mad libs, punctuation worksheets, conext clues/inferences, very short reading with questions to test comprehension, "build your own" paragraph worksheets, spelling/vocab, and some longer writing prompts for when they are ready.

I KNOW that this is not technically my job BUT I do not want to spend another week wasting these kids' time with Lexia. They are all very personable, funny, energetic, and bright- I feel like they could really make some big improvements but I need a little help here getting started.

THANK YOU SO MUCH IN ADVANCE if you respond.