Implementation of gamification in a CLIL context in Preschool Education

Abstract

In bilingual classrooms that carry out integrated learning of content in a foreign language (CLIL), it is necessary to have highly motivated students to learn content taught in a foreign language (English), especially when we deal with children between 3 and 6 years just beginning to have their first contact with the educational institution. We know how useful this type of methodologies at higher levels is as in Primary Education, Secondary Education, etc. but many professionals in the educational fields find it difficult to put it into practice with preschool students, due to the linguistic limitation in both mother tongue and the foreign language. The CLIL methodology has motivational techniques that, knowing how to take advantage of them, would facilitate the teaching of content through a foreign language in these early educational years, such as gamification. Knowing that play is an essential characteristic in the learning of Preschool Education, gamification is the right tool for the students to acquire knowledge and become familiar with the foreign language in a natural and subconscious way, since this tool has characteristics that allow students to focus to achieve goals and face challenges having fun, keeping the students motivated and not frustrated by the difficulties that they can find dealing with a new language. In this paper, a bibliographic research has been carried out on the characteristics and advantages of learning based on the CLIL methodology and on the use of the gamification technique as a didactic tool to develop meaningful learning based on increase the motivation of the students. Also, a learning situation based on the CLIL methodology, and the gamification technique has been proposed and put into practice in a class composed of 3-year-old students, to show how, taking advantage of certain characteristics of gamification, we can achieve a good practice of the CLIL methodology with the youngest of the school.