Our amazing bookworms

It's so delightful to hear such wonderful news about our children reading. They read for nearly 10 million minutes. It's also great for the coordinators of the READING game to have this information, which can possibly be used as a benchmark in the event. 

The Epic Reading Competition

The Epic Reading Competition recently took place in the country's elementary schools (Iceland). Students read for an entire month and compete to see which school has read the most minutes on average. This standard is used so that smaller schools have just as much chance to win as larger ones. In the Epic Reading Competition, all students work together towards the same goal—to read as much as possible. Often, a fun atmosphere is created in the schools surrounding the competition. 

Anything that falls under leisure reading and home reading can be recorded—but not other study material or textbooks. You may listen to audiobooks and read e-books, and you don't have to read only at school; you can read at home too. Guardians sign off on home reading, and contacts in the schools handle sending in the numbers at the end of the competition.  

Statistics

• Took place from September 15th to October 15th.

• Participation - around 17 thousand children participated

• 90 elementary schools - children from 1st to 7th grade

• Schools from all over the country joined in - the smallest school had 6 students and the largest had over 500 students

• The children read for 9.7 million minutes or 161,539 hours

• The average was about 19 minutes a day per student

• Melaskóli won - students read about 30 minutes a day

Which School Won?

The winning school, which this time was Melaskóli, received splendid book awards and, of course, the title: The Most Epic Reading School in the Country. In second place was Grunnskóli Drangsness, and in third place was the Play and Elementary School in Hofgarði.  You can see more about the results on the Facebook page of The Epic Story Factory