Siljan – a video competition. Lessons learnt from a reading promotion project

• Main Author: Þórarinsdóttir, Brynhildur
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: Icelandic
• Published: Menntavísindasvið Háskóla Íslands 2022
• Subjects: reading motivation; literacy; creative schools; information technology; teaching literature; lestrarhvatning; læsi; skapandi skólastarf; upplýsingatækni; bókmenntakennsla; Akureyri; University of Akureyri
• Online Access: https://ojs.hi.is/index.php/netla/article/view/3465

The video competition Siljan is a creative literacy project developed for 5th–10th grade students by the Centre for Children´s Literature at the University of Akureyri. The project involves students creating a video about a recent book for children or adolescents. The objective is to increase interest in reading among students, promote peer support and focus the attention of school communities on books for children and adolescents. The project was initiated in response to the findings of empirical research on literacy among compulsory school students. Research had shown both declining interest in reading and worse performance in tests of reading skills and comprehension. These findings also revealed a substantial gender difference as girls were generally found to be more interested in reading, to have more positive attitudes towards reading and to perform better on standardised tests of reading and comprehension, while boys were more likely to avoid reading. These findings generated substantial concern among educational experts, policy makers and the general public and resulted in various projects to enhance reading skills and literacy. The Siljan project was built around the notion that increasing interest in reading and supporting better reading habits was crucial to enhancing reading comprehension. The video competition was thus developed as a tool to harness the interests and creativity of children and adolescents in projects where they actively engaged with recent children's literature. The competition also generated data that could be used to enhance the reading culture of children and adolescents. The six waves of the competition have generated a database of 230 videos by almost 800 students. In this paper, the Siljan database is used to analyse the students behind the videos with an emphasis on gender and age. Prior research on reading habits among compulsory school students would suggest that girls and younger students would be more likely to participate in such literacy projects. The results confirm ...