5-Minutes of Emma

I love love love love love love (did I mention love?) all things Jane Austen!  She was ahead of her time and yet her stories have the classic happy ending that I secretly long for in all books.  When given the opportunity to try out the website DailyLit, I immediately looked for the Jane Austen selections.  I had never read Emma entirely, and thought this would be a good time. 

There is a light that I hit at Kingsley and SR 17 EVERYDAY!  This light is the feign on my drive and catches me all the time.  I end up sitting at this light for a solid 7 or 8 minutes, usually scrolling through something on Facebook.  I was glad to have a change when I started getting my Emma delivered to my smartphone a few minutes before I left work and just in time for that particular light.

The first few days were just fine.  I stopped, pulled out my phone, and read.  However, I found that there were some days that I wanted to continue reading (which I could not find a way to do).  So, what I ended up doing was saving them and reading them two at a time (essentially reading every other day).  This was exactly the right amount of the story that I needed at that stop light.  I believe there was a way to change the amount delivered, I just continued with my system. 

While I enjoyed having Emma to read every day, I had a hard time keeping up with the story (probably because of the way I was reading it).  I had to go back, reread the one from the day before and continue on.  This began to get tedious, so I switched back to reading only one bit a day of Emma. 

The short snippets from the stories were actually really helpful when it came to understanding the vocabulary.  For example, Emma is written in dated English and some words and phrases take a moment to extrapolate the meaning.  Having such a small amount to read, it didn't feel useless taking the time to make sure I understood what I was reading. 

Since I started using DailyLit, I recommended it to a librarian friend of mine who is also enjoying getting snippets sent to her smartphone.  I, also, have taken to reading another story using DailyLit.  I hope to somehow incorporate this website or strategy into my classroom in order to make reading enjoyable for kids who believe that reading is nothing but work.  Maybe, just maybe, when they are adults (and assuming there are still such things as traffic lights) they will sit in traffic and read a classic just for the sake of reading.