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This article by Dr. Janette Hughes talks about the import role poetry plays in literacy development and how multi-media uses of poetry in the classroom can further enhance and engage a students learning process. For the sake of how in depth both of these subjects are, I'm only going to discuss what Dr. Hughes says about poetry and literacy development in this article. "Paying attention to the language and rhythms of poetry helps build oral language skills…..Children with well-developed oral language skills are more likely to have higher achievement in reading and writing" (Hughes). Poetry has an elitist stereotype to it, and tends to be something kept out of middle school and high school classrooms for the most part. Some English classes may briefly touch on some of the cannons of poetry, but only focus on a traditional notion of reading the context and finding the one single meaning. As Hughes states, "The dominant model of poetry teaching, particularly for older students, has been to teach poetry through print text and to focus on finding one meaning to be dissected. In contrast, poets emphasize the importance of hearing the poem read aloud, engaging with it, and probing for deeper meaning through discussion with others" (Hughes). I feel that engagement in poetry provides tools applicable to understanding every type of text. The brevity in poetry forces your mind to work in more analytical ways, and a facilitation of this analysis with other students provides a type of engaging learning experience that can be applied to any type of text for any class. This article really fascinated me, and left me with many more questions and ideas I would like to explore regarding poetry in the classroom.

The University of Austin Texas posted an article on their website talking about the innovative approach English professors John Rumrich and Coleman Hutichson created for teaching Milton's poem Paradise Lost. The two wanted to incorporate multimedia uses into the teaching of the poem in order to enhance the reading and listening experience, as well as actively engage students into incorporating their meaning of the texts. The website they created has the poem being read aloud be various voices while the text itself is highlighted on the screen. Each line or group of lines has links to them that a student can follow which provide images, websites, or comments from students and teachers expressing their interpretation of the lines or ideas and questions prompted from them. The website Rumrich and Hutichson created have had around 25,000 hits world wide, and have inspired similar projects dedicated to the poems Leaves of Grass and Song of Myself. If poetry were to be taught in high schools with technology in mind, students would be more likely to actively participate in reading and discussing poetry then if it were just read as any other text.

let's try to link more directly to writing/learning to write.