Work-in-Progress: GameLet: Readers’ Theater in Media-Based Gamification for Reading Skills

Abstract

Τhis article discusses how to promote learners’ oral reading fluency in primary and secondary schools using digital media-based gamification. It presents a study in progress carried out for the Erasmus+ project GameLet (Gamified, media-based training of reading fluency), in Germany, Cyprus, and Portugal. GameLet is based on the concept of the Multilingual Readers’ Theater (MELT), which extends the traditional Readers’ Theater (RT) by integrating foreign languages in school, including migrant student mother tongues. “Meaningful” digital media-based gamification mechanisms are applied to the development of learning scenarios and materials to increase pupil motivation in self-directed, individual and cooperative learning phases for reading fluency training. During 2019, usability testing trials were conducted in participating schools on the gameboard application and the didactic design of the scenario-based tasks given to students-players of the game. In addition to the design, this article presents the results of the formative evaluation conducted in Cyprus and Germany.