Kim Foglia’s Building Macromolecules, Digital Edition

Our bodies–and the food we eat to sustain our bodies, and the information our cells hold to create and maintain our bodies–are made of large biological molecules.

In fact, the world around us is created and maintained thanks to the building up and breaking down of large molecules in living systems. We wouldn’t have life without these molecules!

(Other topics in biology that touch on this essential question: enzymes, DNA synthesis, transcription and translation, cell respiration, photosynthesis, biogeochemical cycling)

After researching nutritional information, pricing, and availability of nutritious foods; completing a virtual simulation of building macromolecules from monomers and other components; and completing graphic organizers based on their work, students will be able to

• Describe the properties of the monomers and the type of bonds that connect the monomers in biological macromolecules.
• Compare and contrast the shapes and component chemical atoms of complex carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids.
• Express pride in their or their family’s favorite foods without denying the value and dignity of others. [introduction]
• Explain how differential accessibility of healthy food is an injustice at the systemic level. [introduction, assessment]

Stand-alone macromolecule activity, adapted directly from Kim Foglia:

After completing a virtual simulation of building macromolecules from monomers and other components, as well as completing graphic organizers based on their work, students will be able to

• Describe the properties of the monomers and the type of bonds that connect the monomers in biological macromolecules.
• Compare and contrast the shapes and component chemical atoms of complex carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids.

This lesson digitizes Kim Foglia’s beloved “Building Macromolecules” assignment using a self-paced Google slideshow with embedded prompts and instructions that provide important scaffolding to the inquiry. (See more about Kim below.) This lesson places Kim’s assignment in a context where students will examine differential food accessibility through a critical lens.

In the introduction to the activity, students can explore food nutritional information and accessibility in several ways.

During the activity, students will get concrete practice modeling the abstract, often challenging-to-learn chemistry that happens as macromolecules are broken and built, with a specific focus on how water is used in hydration reactions and created in dehydration synthesis. It also allows students to uncover, via guided inquiry, the structural orientation of monomers/subunits in biological macromolecules (particularly important in the synthesis of nucleic acids), as well as the naming conventions of macromolecules.

After preliminary practice with manipulating images in Google Slides, students complete scaffolded steps to build

• a carbohydrate from sugars
• two lipids (in this case, a triglyceride fat) from fatty acids and glycerol
• a protein from amino acids
• a strand of DNA, using an antiparallel template strand, from nucleic acids

Finally, students will use their work to fill out graphic organizers that ask them to compare and contrast

• hydrolysis and dehydration synthesis
• the shapes of the biological macromolecules they’ve built
• the chemical elements visible in each type of macromolecule’s building blocks

As a performance assessment, students will create annotated nutritional labels that describe both the macromolecular content and differential accessibility of healthful foods.

This lesson’s conclusion asks students to create one or more annotated nutritional label(s) with descriptions of the macromolecular content and information on differential accessibility of healthful foods as a culminating performance.

Other assessments:

• This assignment includes a built-in formative assessment at its conclusion, with each table the students complete directly tied to standards.
• As a formative or summative assessment, consider incorporating an open-ended question on how macromolecules are made and broken via dehydration synthesis and hydrolysis into a larger performance assessment on the next topics in your teaching sequence. You might even ask your students to choose between modalities, like
  • telling the story using sketches or manipulatives.
  • pointing to the carbohydrate, sugar, etc. on a sheet of biological macromolecules and their building blocks and describing how they are similar and different.

• Kim Foglia’s Building Macromolecules, digital edition workspace
  • Students will make their own copy of the workspace to complete the assignment.
  • You can share this link directly with students if you do not wish to make any modifications to the assignment.
  • If you wish to make modifications to the assignment, you will need to:
    • Make your own copy of the document by going to File –> Make a copy.
    • Set the sharing so your students can VIEW (not edit).
    • Make any edits needed.
    • Share the link to YOUR copy of the assignment with students.

See notes at the bottom of this section for suggestions about how to modify this assignment to suit your/your students’ needs.

Time requirements

As presented here, this assignment takes approximately two fifty-to-sixty-minute work periods: one for the introduction and to start the activity, and another to complete the activity and begin the final performance.

Tech requirements

Students will need:

• A device that can edit Google Slides with access to internet
• A Google Drive account to use Google Slides
• A way to turn in assignments (via your school’s learning management system such as Canvas or Schoology, or by a Google Form you create).
• If your students are learning remote-only, consider recording walkthrough videos where you read through the assignment in a screencast. Make the walkthrough available to students as an optional resource so those who process well using auditory input are supported.

Introducing and facilitating the lesson

This lesson is designed to be completed asynchronously or synchronously, in pairs (with students sharing and editing one copy of the workspace in real time) or individually.

You can introduce the lesson in several ways that center food and feature a justice perspective. One useful way that allows students to honor their families’ food traditions is to provide information from the current Dietary Guidelines for Americans from the USDA and HHS, such as this PDF that lists foods that originated in kitchens around the world. (The Dietary Guidelines framework replaced the well-known “food pyramid” recommendations.)

• Do students recognize ingredients from their own family kitchens?
• Their favorite fruit?
• What makes these foods nutritious? [Guide students towards seeing that, eaten together, these foods provide an array of starches/carbohydrates, fats, and protein.]
• What instructions do plants and animals use to create these important and delicious foods? [Guide students towards considering genes or DNA.]
• Analyze the availability and financial cost of these foods where you live. What stores in your region carry these types of foods? How much do they cost? How might what you’ve learned about affordability and location impact who in our country can access these more nutritious foods?
• Discussion guidelines:
  • Help steer the discourse in ways that celebrate, rather than marginalize or degrade, difference in family food preference or consumption.
  • Refrain from asking students about their own family or friends. Instead, consider discussing case studies or hypothetical neighborhoods whose characteristics correspond to those with high access and low access to these nutritious foods.

Alternatively, you can have students explore nutritional labels for several different foods that are common to diets of many people in America: think natural peanut butter, whole-wheat pasta, or apples. All these foods can be part of a healthy, nutritious diet–but they are differentially available to people in our country.

• What do their nutritional labels have in common?
• How are they different?
• What different nutritional contents do these labels track? [Guide students towards noticing starches/carbohydrates, fats, and protein.]
• What instructions do plants and animals use to create what we use as food? [Guide students towards considering genes or DNA.]
• Analyze the availability and financial cost of these foods where you live.
  • What stores in your region carry these types of foods?
  • How much do they cost?
  • How might what you’ve learned about affordability and location affect who can access these nutritious foods?
• Discussion guidelines:
  • Help steer the discourse in ways that celebrate, rather than marginalize or degrade, difference in family food preference or consumption.
  • Rather than ask students about their own family or friends, you can choose to discuss case studies or hypothetical neighborhoods whose characteristics correspond to those with high access and low access to these nutritious foods.

You might ask students to select their own highly nutritious foods to research, then report back to a group or the whole class with their findings.

Teachers can facilitate the lesson in real time by

• answering questions that students may have
• facilitating students looking at others’ work to check their answers for similarities or differences
• being ready to give guidance, particularly on synthesizing DNA, whose templated and anti-parallel nature are sometimes not immediately obvious to students

Tying this lesson to assessment/expected outcomes

Summative

As a culminating performance, ask students to create one or more annotated nutritional label(s) with:

• sketches or prepared structure diagrams of carbohydrates/ sugars, protein, and fats, as well as their building blocks
• descriptions and/or sketches of the types of bonds that create the macromolecules from the building blocks
• lists of which chemical elements build each macromolecule
• a justification/explanation of how differential accessibility of healthy food is an injustice at the systemic level.
  • Students can use the research they did at the start of the lesson, as well as students’ assessments of the case studies, as evidence to support the claim.

Be sure to assess student understanding of DNA’s structure in another assessment, as the DNA we eat does not readily become the DNA in our bodies.

Formative

• The “Putting It Together” prompts at the conclusion of the activity are a useful comprehension check on the molecular components of this lesson.
• You might choose to use multiple-choice or short-answer formative assessment questions to help students check their understandings after completing this assignment.

Transitioning to the next activity

What happens next will depend on your curriculum sequence for biology or life science, but in micro-to-macro biology sequences it is a great activity for early in the course. This activity creates an important, concrete foundation for students to go on to explore topics including

• properties of water
• protein structure and function
• nutrition
• digestive physiology, including comparative anatomy
• cellular structures
• DNA synthesis
• translation

Modifications to suit your/your students’ needs 

• The picture used to practice cropping can be swapped out to honor one or more of your students and their families. One of my students this year has family who harvests tea in the Philippines, and he was excited for us to celebrate that part of his identity!
• You can replace the final tables at the end of the assignment with a digital card sort. Simply create small text boxes with words or chemical elements on a chart slide, scatter them on the slide in the margins around the table, and students will be able to drag each word or element to the correct place.
• You might provide additional representation of dehydration synthesis and hydrolysis by using atom/molecule kits to pre-build glucose monomers, then asking students to represent the processes. Rather than having students build the molecules from scratch using the molecule kits, focus on how bonds are rearranged in the two processes at the joining site between monomers.

AP Biology standards:

• SYI-1.B Describe the properties of the monomers and the type of bonds that connect the monomers in biological macromolecules.
  • Essential Knowledge SYI-1.B.1 Hydrolysis and dehydration synthesis are used to cleave and form covalent bonds between monomers.
  • Science Practice 2.A Describe characteristics of a biological concept, process, or model represented visually.

IN state content standard for biology:

• B.1.1 Compare and contrast the shape … of the essential biological macromolecules (i.e. carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids), as well as how chemical elements (i.e. carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur) can combine to form these biomolecules.

IN state science process standard:

• SEPS.2 Use and construct conceptual models that illustrate ideas and explanations.