Biochemistry Literacy for Kids

Last Spring, I attended the NJ STEM Conference for K-12 Teachers, hosted at Caldwell University. The speaker that I enjoyed the most was Daniel Fried, founder of Biochemistry Literacy for Kids. As he states on his website:

"Biochemistry Literacy for Kids is a unique learning program that brings comprehensive college science curricula to students beginning in elementary school."

From the very beginning of his session, what impressed me the most wasn't Dr. Fried's credentials (he graduated with his PhD in organic chemistry from Yale)--it was his passion for the project, his utter faith in children to learn college-level material, his attention to detail when explaining molecular structures with Molymod kits, and how quickly he navigated through his workspace when looking for items to show us. Here are my sketch notes from his session:

Let me walk you through the note.

• Dr. Fried demonstrated the phase change from ice to water by assembling water molecules, attaching them with hydrogen bonds, and simulating an increase in energy by shaking the molecule until the hydrogen bonds were disrupted. If you're familiar with Molymod kits, you might be wondering how one would add hydrogen bonds, and you're right. The kits can you purchase from Molymod don't provide sites for hydrogen bonding, but Dr. Fried collaborated with them to create a custom set for his program, where you could model hydrogen bonds. As an AP Chemistry and AP Biology teacher, I can attest that this is especially useful!

• Instead of starting with the Periodic Table of Elements as most chemistry classes does, Dr. Fried used a program called PyMol to show students (in a very Magic School Bus kind of way) a space-filling model of hemoglobin, a protein made of four polypeptides, or chains of amino acids. He zoomed into the details and guided us to look for patterns--patterns he would later use to explain the trends in the Period Table. This big-picture overview is often a crucial missing piece of traditional curricula, where topics are covered in isolation from one another.

• He talked about an example of an amazing assignment he gave grade-schoolers after they had progressed far enough into the curriculum. Given a specific signaling molecule, they were asked to design an active site, or the slot where a molecule would fit into another. They'd have to predict the favorable and likely chemical interactions between different amino acid sequences. Students approached this like a game and came up with incredible models. The discussion led into pharmacology and how we can design medicine to mimic the behavior of other molecules or otherwise effect change.

• Dr. Fried led a room full of adults in an interactive lesson on polymerization, or how polymers are made from monomers. Each person made one molecule of vinyl chloride and then he showed us how we could connect the chains in certain patterns to achieve a linear fashion to make polyvinyl chloride, or PVC. He helped us make the connections on the microscopic level (implications of molecular geometry and bonding type) and macroscopic level (the bulk behavior of the material).

He went on to share about his path to creating Biochemistry Literacy for Kids and as he mentioned how the program came to be during the pandemic, I started thinking about the homeschooling community. I went on to purchase the program and have tried to revamp Unit 1: Chemistry of Life in AP Biology. Although I wasn't able to integrate it as fully as I wanted to this year, I highly recommend checking out this resource. Dr. Fried is incredible and I hope to collaborate with him in the future.