Biography

Jorgelina Magaly Pacheco Anzora

I am 23 years old; I was born in July, 1989 in San Salvador. I am the youngest of two daughters in the family. I really enjoy listening to music and spend time with my family. 

 

I completed my junior high in Centro Escolar Jorge Larde, San Martin. After that I graduated from Centro Cultural Salvadoreño Americano as Bilingual Technical Assistant in 2007.  I have been studying bachelor in English language in Don Bosco University since 2009. About my teaching experience I have the opportunity to teach English in free courses in Pedagogica University to children and teenagers; work that I have been doing for about 2 years.  I also worked for a short period of time in Esparza School, place where I taught from kindergarten to junior high school in which I had to organize an open school for all these levels; challenge that I had to overcome because I had never worked with too many grades at the same time before. Nevertheless, all this experience makes me realize how a person can change from being shy to feel secure and demonstrate the skills and knowledge acquired from real life and studies and how you learn from your mistakes to change and improve the way you are doing the things not just to become a better person but to have something good to share to someone else.  So, my goals and achievements from now on are to keep on learning new things, to fulfill my career and take advantage of it to help others to learn English using the knowledge acquired.

Adolescents

In order to know how to teach to teenagers, it is necessary to know about them and see what we can do for them in the teaching field. It is interesting to see how the brain takes an important role in the developing thoughts of adolescents. How the brain structure works, tell us why adolescents behave the way they do and how they process the information received.  The corpus callusom, are nerves fibers which connect the brain´s two hemisphere, they thicken in adolescence to process information more effectively. (Giedd, 2008) The prefrontal cortex is related to intense emotions involving reasoning, decision making and self-control which does not finish developing until adult years. Added to this, the Amigdala is the seat of emotions like anger. This area matures much earlier than prefrontal cortex. Change that explains why teenagers get aggressive behavior during interaction with parents and sometimes with teachers. 

Knowing about Piaget and Vygotsky theories can lead us to know the factors in what teenagers get new information and construct from it new knowledge and take advantage of social interaction working with others in cooperative activities. On the other hand, teenager’s attention span is short not up to 15 minutes but as teachers we can guide students to allocate their attention using the different types of attention such as: selective attention, divided attention, sustained attention and executive attention. Now talking about executive functioning; making decisions, reasoning and critical thinking are part of it and during adolescence period they  are able to increase such functions because the cognitive changes as increased speed, capacity of information processing and construct new combination of knowledge are increasing. Guilford states that brainstorming and introducing adolescents to creative people can be used to stimulate creative thinking. 

The stereotype in society about gender is a factor to consider when teaching. Society has set many ideas about the roles male and female play, like: men are powerful and women are weak. Deborah Tannen (1990) says that boys and girls grow up in different worlds of talk – parents, siblings, teachers, etc. she pointed that the communication in relationships is important.  She established two types:  the rapport talk: a way to established and negotiating relationships. Females enjoy rapport talk.  And the Report talk: talk that gives information. Public speaking is an example of it. Boys like this type of talk.  But gender differences in communication often depend on the context like: group size, speaking with adults, and familiarity. 

In real context “in school” students experience many transitions to one grade to a higher one or vice versa. These transitions influence in students´ self-esteem, behavior and communication with others.  That is the importance for a classroom positive environment for learning.  Diana Baumrind (1971) gives two strategies to a positive environment. The authoritative strategy of classroom management (encourages students to be independent thinkers) and the authoritarian strategy of classroom management (restrictive and punitive).  These strategies can help us to make a good environment in class. Teachers must be aware of the way teens threat others in school (bullying) and know what to do with adolescents with learning disabilities like: ADHD or dyslexia. 

All these changes and challenges adolescents go through are helpful hints for teachers to be prepared to manage the classroom in an efficient way when teaching. So, students learn and remember useful things not for short period of time but for their whole life.

Teaching Practicum II “Teenagers”

Class 1

Topic presented: writing an E-mail

Skill: writing

Date: March 15^th, 2013

To teach this class we organized the lesson by skills. It was something new for me, teaching by skills following a book as a guide is not easy. However, I enjoyed doing it and with the help of my teammates and the guidance of the teacher the work does not seem to be so tough.  In this time I taught writing skill, a 30 minutes length class.  I divided the class in three sections: presentation, practice and production. In the presentation time I felt comfortable since I was not the first one to start the class. Students felt a little bit shy when inferring about the picture with two friends. In order to make this part more participating I asked several questions to students to make them think. In the practice part I asked one student to read the instructions, at that moment I realized that I did not know the names of the students. Now I think that I should have used name tags with the name of each student. Consequently, I asked one student to give me a number from 1 to 5 and then count from him/her pointing each student until get to the right number.

Another aspect I notice when I was monitoring students ‘work was the desks arrangement. Students seemed to be too far away from me. The best thing to do was to arrange the desks in an appropriate distance so we can interact better. In the last part I ran out of time. They only finished writing the E-mail, my objective was to have students to write an E-mail and then reply to a new one and share as a class.  It did not happen; I should have collected the papers and the next class returns to each student with a feedback, so they learn to be aware of their mistakes and how  they can improve.

Class 2

Topic presented: famous people

Skill: reading

Date: March 22^th, 2013

 In the presentation part of this lesson I activated students´ schemata using pictures with the vocabulary presented in the reading. What it was interesting about this part was that student’s respond was excellent. They match the words with the pictures and then using the vocabulary they inferred the topic of the reading. In the during part almost all went well, due to the fact that when they fill the chart collecting information from reading I asked them to say the information they got. They looked surprise and some of them felt reluctance to do it. This means that sometimes students are accustomed just to read and fill some blanks, etc. but not to tell about what they read. Therefore, to keep an eye on this and make activities that contribute to develop this skill will help students to have an active interaction and see this as something they are able to do. 

 I also noticed the ability they have to read and find the information. Some do not even looked back to check the information when answering multiple choice questions. But in the post reading part I could notice that some students felt shy when talking about their favorite star taken from the reading. So, I asked myself. Was it because they did not like to talk about these stars?  Should I have told them to talk about their favorite star not about one of the stars from the reading? by making this adjustment probably this part can work better.

Class 3

Topic presented: Birthdays

Skill: listening

Date: April 5^th, 2013

Well, this class was a special one. From the beginning I could say that arrived on time. However, I did not have enough time to take a breath and have all the materials to use in order. The topic of the lesson was “birthdays” word related to synonyms such as: fun, party, numbers. In the pre-listening I asked students if they have sung the song “happy birthday” and then we proceeded to sing it. Since de beginning I felt the class as a low battery, maybe because of me and the tone of my voice or the enthusiasm that I expressed at that moment. I also had problems with the time. Why this part always take too long? Management time is essential to fulfill the objectives you set for your students. I think that be aware of the time and be realistic with the types of activities you assign for a specific time will help to finish the work on time. 

 

The environment teacher creates in the classroom is essential to motivate students to keep interested in what they are learning.  Active activities are forms to do it. The last activity in post-listening consisted in asking and answering questions about age.  All students participated and it was funny, the used of balloons gave a charge of energy to conclude this class.   A class must be active so from now on I would try to be more enthusiasm and use more kinesthetic activities to cheer my students up.