Do the Enzyme Shuffle!!! : An In-Class Practice on Reaction Identification

The attached documents together describe an interactive classroom activity designed to help introductory biology students distinguish between catabolic and anabolic reactions and to reinforce the specificity of enzyme-substrate interactions. This activity is a movement-based partner activity where students physically match enzyme-substrate pairs utilizing cut index-card halves designed to represent unique enzyme active sites. Upon finding their correct partner, they identify whether their assigned biochemical reaction is catabolic or anabolic. This activity encourages: Peer-to-Peer Interaction Conceptual reasoning beyond wrote memorization Quick formative assessment of students understanding You can find more detailed instructions for the preparation and execution of this activity in the attached resources. In addition, the needed list of reactions and key can be found in resources as well. My experience with implementation of this activity was in a course for non-majors, however I believe that this activity could be easily modified for a science majors course. Perhaps rather than giving them a reaction description they must come up with a real reaction that is either catabolic or anabolic. You could also add further classifications of reactions as well (i.e. condensation, hydrolysis, phosphorylation, etc). This would easily ramp up the difficulty of the activity. With such room for modification, Id love to hear how your experience with this activity went and any suggestions or things you did differently!