Poetry Workshop and Literacy Choices

I really enjoyed both of the class videos that we watched for this week's blog posting. When we got to view the classroom's Literacy Choices time, it reminded me of my 1st grade classroom at Fairview's Daily 5. It seemed like these students had a wider range of choices, which may be good for some students, who may tire of just the 5 activities to choose from. I have noticed that my classroom teacher switched the class's Daily 5 activities after a certain number of weeks, so I assume that they alternate on a quarter system. The Literacy Choices really allowed the students to do anything that they wanted as long as it related to literacy. It forced the students to be doing something, but students could be as engaged or as disengaged as they chose; however, they would still be getting something out of the activity. For example, I think the students writing comic books would probably get more out of this time than the boy who was copying a girl's name on the chalkboard; however, this boy was still writing and using visual cues to make meaning, so he was still taking advantage of his time.
I also liked the idea of a poetry workshop. When I was in third grade, my class had a poetry unit, but we only wrote our own poems and then created our own poetry book as an end result. I love the idea of performing the Choral pieces because it not only introduces students to a fun genre of poetry, but it can also help students with fluency, as they practice the piece multiple times until it sounds perfect.