Brian Kim

Reflection on Site Visit

The site visit to the grade 8 math class was a very different experience from my
experiences working with a grade 1 class. Working with a grade 1 class, more time
is spent trying to keep the students on task and less time on explaining the lessons,
but the grade 8 class tended to stay on task without too much intervention.
The majority of the class time was spent on theory explanation of percentages, semi
structured group work and discussion. One thing that I did notice about the class
was that there was no work being done that could have been evaluated formatively,
which was interesting when compared to my experiences in middle school math
class. The work finished by the students were only discussed and not specifically
marked by the teacher, which raised some questions about how much groundwork
the teacher had to do in order to insure that no students were falling between the
cracks, or at what point does a teacher feel that they know the students individual
ability level enough to run classes solely based off summative work?
It would have been interesting to sit in that specific classroom for a longer period of
time to find out what the day to day structure of the lessons are, to find out the
ratio of summative and formative work being done in class as well as when the
teacher begins to switch from one type of work to the other.

Reflection on Our Presentation on Religion in the Classroom

During the preparation of this presentation, Marrisa and I found out that she is
currently member of a church that I grew up in but no longer take part in. Initially I
was worried that this may cause a conflict during the preparation of the
presentation, but thankful neither of us had any aggressive opinions about either
side. So rather than a contentious process of preparation, our differing views made
for a presentation that was enhanced by our joint experiences.
Religion seems to be a topic that is becoming more and more taboo within school
systems, given that the school is not a specifically a religious school. Even within
our Ed 2500 class, I noticed during our class introduction write up, Corey
recommending omissions of certain religious aspects of peoples introduction. Im
not criticizing Coreys recommendations, but I do believe that in order to have a
truly, all-inclusive class, the key is not to omit religious details, but to educate
everyone to a point where everyone is knowledgeable and understands all religions
and are no longer offended or are tip toeing around the topic. Religion can be a
source of conflict, but it seems that at the end of the day, all religions boil down to a
message of acceptance and positivity, we as (future) teachers just need to be able
to carry that message into our classrooms.
In terms of the self-evaluation, our biggest issue was our time management. I feel
that our presentation tried to fit in too much and we were not prepared enough to
appropriately adapt to the situation and ended up cutting short more of the
important aspects of our presentation. During our preparation, we were over

concerned about not having enough material to fill the time and didnt discuss
enough about the possibility of having too much material. In the end I feel that we
managed to get our message across adequately and kept peoples attention very
well.