We've been trialling something new in the seniors around literacy this term. We've been giving students the choice of what reading workshop they want to sign up for, and the students are enjoying having the choice.

Teachers had to sell their choices to students who then got to choose which four-week workshop they wanted to attend.  The choices were: Song lyrics, Sophisticated picture books, Fairy tales and Newsela.com current events.

There was a lot of excitement and competition around who was going to which workshop.

Students commented favourably about having some choice in their learning:

"I like having choice. It's more exciting. I chose the song lyrics workshop because I was really interested in songs. I liked getting deep into the songs. When we looked at an Ed Sheeran song called 'Nancy Mulligan' we learnt so much about the song, about his grandfather and grandma. We were really surprised and more engaged," said Rica Prado.

"I like current events. I liked there being a choice due to the fact that it was less restrictive and we could learn what we want," said Sky Huang.

"It was good we could express our different interests and discover new things. It was interesting to hear about what other people were doing. I heard fairytales were really fun," Charlotte Carey.

"I wanted to know what it was like to read a book with just pictures and not many words (Sophisticated Picture Books). It was interesting. The pictures led us to what the story was about. I like to chose so I feel free to do what I wanted," Luciano Felise.