Teacher Spotlight

North Shore Senior High campus’ English EOC teacher Jay Cherin enjoys integrating technology into his classroom.  Mr. Cherin started teaching in Houston in 1989 and joined the Galena Park family in 2012. He brings many years of instructional leadership to the classroom and the NSSH faculty. He earned a Master of Arts in English from Indiana University-Bloomington in 1990 and a Bachelor of Arts in English from The University of Texas at Austin. Mr. Cherin has a plethora of technology expertise to share with his students via Chromebook instruction and the classroom interactive panel. He has a Google Suite for education 21st-century classroom along with multiple other apps and tools he regularly integrates into the curriculum such as Flipgrid, Kahoot, Padlet, Google Classroom, Quizziz, etc. Mr. Cherin believes that all students, regardless of their background, are valuable and capable members of the learning community. He is an advocate for students and promoting tolerance and valuing diversity in his classes.

General

• The next time you assign a project to your class, add a “Mission Possible” theme by using one of the templates in Powtoon.  You can use Powtoon to create free, animated, instructional videos, for any type of lesson.  Here is a sample “Mission Impossible” video made from the Powtoon template.
• Use Google Draw or any other graphic art application of your choice to add speech bubbles to your images.  Have your students find an image of an influential person and add a quote to that image in a speech bubble.
• Digital portfolios are a great way to collect and organize your content.  Have your students create websites displaying their projects along with notes, images, and content videos for review.  The students can also use their websites as a reference when completing assignments.

Biology

• Try:  having your students create 3D Models of enzymes using Tinkercad and then print the top models in each class with your 3D Printers.  

• College Readiness Skill: Digital portfolios are a great way to collect and organize your content.  Have your students create websites displaying their projects along with notes, images, and content videos for review.  The students can also use their websites as a reference when completing assignments.

• Curriculum Integration Idea:  STEMscopes is an empowering tool, with a variety of resources for teachers, offering dynamic support tools that provide STEM activities for students. Log in to STEMscopes and use these links to open the following scopes.  B9C Enzymes, B.10A Interactions in Animals,  B.10B Interactions in Plants

• Technology Integration Idea: Log in to lessons.nuiteq.com and use these ClearTouch Panel activities created by gcalvo@galenaparkisd or create your own using Nuiteq Snowflake.  Body System Cards Drop, Body Systems Cards,  Body Systems Match.

Chemistry

• Try: Check out this blog post on a 100+ Ways to Use a Chromebook in the Classroom!

• College Readiness Skill: These six Chromebook keyboard shortcuts are among the most popular shortcuts that can help you do more in less time. While these tips are especially helpful for teachers and students who use Chromebooks at school, you might find they help you get things done faster, regardless of whether you're at school or home. These shortcuts would be helpful for students documenting chemical reactions in Unit 6 or any other classwork.

• Curriculum Integration Idea: It’s so important that we celebrate student success and help every student to feel like an MVP of the classroom. The purpose is to highlight the great plays you may have missed. Why not do the same thing to share all the amazing experiences going on in our classrooms? Teachers can create plays of the week to highlight the students in their classrooms or students could use the same templates to document Chemistry units highlighting each unit with notes and projects. Check out this great resource!

• Technology Integration Idea: Help your students become better searchers. Web search can be a remarkable tool for students, and a bit of instruction in how to search for academic sources will help your students become critical thinkers and independent learners. Check out this great resource from Google Search Education on how to become better searchers.

Physics

•  Try: Check out this webinar on How to Get Google Certified!

• College Readiness Skill: Glide is a cool new way to create your own app without using any code! You can create an app with information from a google sheets document. Check out this informative video tutorial on how to create your very first app! Teachers can create class apps to house all their class information and resources in one location and students could create a school app to organize and house their classwork, resources, etc.  Glide turns spreadsheets into beautiful, easy to use apps!

• Curriculum Integration Idea: Google slides is a great option for students to create digital notebooks for documenting science experiments and keeping track of their classroom notes. It’s a great versatile digital organizer! Check out this site for ideas and a template.

• Technology Integration Idea: Creating quizzes in Google Forms that are automatically graded once the students submit them is a great tool for your classroom. You can create comprehension quizzes for Unit 6- Momentum and Impulse or exit tickets, etc. Students could also create review quizzes to test themselves and their peers. The possibilities are endless! Check out this comprehensive resource guide on how to Create & grade quizzes with Google Forms.