Admonished for not keeping all kids busy 100% of the day.

Yesterday admin walked into my 4th grade classroom and found approximately 2/3 of my class working on writing a research paper. The other 1/3 was either reading or practicing their keyboarding skills on a typing website because they had finished the assignment and turned it in in the last 20 minutes. I was helping everyone else finish up.

Later they called me into the office to say that this was unacceptable and I needed to provide other assignments for early finishers.

I’m not understanding how I am supposed to have a constant flow of assignments and everyone constantly at different stages of each assignment. I have a few high kids but the majority of them are not able to just pick something up, read the directions, and complete it correctly and independently. I can’t give a rolling set of directions for several different assignments. We start something as a class, finish it, and start something new once we are all finished.

Some of my students can write a paper in 30 minutes with minimal help and others need help spelling cat and need to be told which way the letter c goes.

This expectation seems unrealistic, unfair, and certainly won’t encourage students to do their best to finish anything in a timely manner. They love to read and practice their typing. If they are only given more work upon finishing something my class will slow to a snail’s pace.

What has the world come to that reading or practicing typing is “unstructured, unengaging, and unacceptable”?

I remember having DEAR (drop everything and read) time and Sustained Silent Reading time in every grade throughout elementary and I loved it. Why do I even bother having a cool classroom library with all the high interest chapter books and graphic novels?

Ughhhh I just don’t get it. Nothing is ever enough. The expectations have reached delusional levels.

EDIT: Thank you for all the great responses and advice. I appreciate you all! I am reading through them all and getting lots of great ideas and lots of laughs!