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Alex LaForest

ACTION RESEARCH CASE STUDY: GAMIFIED LANGUAGE ACQUISITION PROPOSAL

REQUIRED ITEMS RESPONSES

VOLUNTEER’S NAME Sydney Mayberry
TOPIC The action research project will focus on content related
vocabulary acquisition.

BACKGROUND Mrs. Mayberry is a grade 7th and 8th grade science teacher at PreK-
INFORMATION 8 Dual Language school. The school has a 53% Hispanic/Latino
population with a majority population of MLLs. This is Sydney
Mayberry’s 6th teaching and 1st year at her current school. There
are 24 students in her homeroom, consisting of 7 MLLs and 4
students on IEPs/504s.

RATIONALE Sydney Mayberry has expressed a desire to improve student

engagement. She will be working towards gamifying vocabulary
instruction. The rationale behind this encompasses that the district
science curriculum is vocabulary heavy. She has expressed that for
general education learners that it is difficult to retain all of the
words necessary to be successful, add learning a new language on
top of that and the pursuit of proficiency becomes more difficult.
By gamifying vocabulary Sydney Mayberry hopes to improve
means of engagement and retention in both the learning and
utilization of content specific vocabulary terms.

RESEARCH QUESTION How does gamifying vocabulary instruction improve language

acquisition, student engagement, and retention of content specific
vocabulary?

STATE LEARNING MS-ESS3-2 Earth and Human Activity. Analyze and interpret data
STANDARDS on natural hazards to forecast future catastrophic events and inform
the development of technologies to mitigate their effects.
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Alex LaForest