DnD: Biochemistry - Scaffolding diversity Inspired by the Natural Product Evodiamine: Discovery of H

Allow me to introduce a new series of teaching tools: Deconstruct and Digest (DnD). DnD* is a series of worksheets designed to expose students to professional scientific writing and familiarize them with the format, language, and overall style. The main goal of a scientific paper is to communicate research and results effectively to their audience. The best scientific papers, on the other hand, though drier than normal prose, do so while being interesting and useful to its readers, including newcomers to the field.

In English class, we tell our students to practice writing often and to read even more often in order to become effective writers. On the other hand, once we require our students to submit laboratory reports in our science classes, we give them relatively little support in the writing process. If we want our students to succeed in their scientific writing, we should also expose them to read a lot of scientific writing.

So, I have created Deconstruct and Digest. Through DnD, students will have the opportunity to read real, published scientific papers (generally, ones I've found via open access journals and use for educational purposes only).

"But, Suzie, how can a beginner who doesn't know the difference between her protons and electrons even begin to comprehend research involving the complex properties of and reactions with macromolecules?" --I have considered this. I intend to provide several types of DnD worksheets for all levels of students. (Pardon me, I write the worksheets with high school chemistry students in mind. If you are interested in versions for students of other disciplines, let me know here or in the comments section below!) The goal of DnD is not to have students completely understand the research nor to have them repeat the experiment. Instead, the goal is to familiarize them with the style of scientific writing and the language of the discipline. For those who are thinking of pursuing a career in research and science, this is a crucial first step. For those who are not interested in pursuing a career in science, hopefully, this will be reason to have an appreciation for the work of researchers through exposure to papers from the science community itself.

I hope I've chosen papers and topics that students can either find interesting or relate to content they've learned in class. Given the pre-existing courseload of a typical high school student, I recommend assigning DnD worksheets in addition to the normal homework that has them review whatever was discussed in class. Since scientific papers are so dense with information, they take a lot of time to digest, even with a DnD worksheet. So I also suggest giving your students at least a week and a half or two weeks to submit each DnD assignment.

Without further ado, here is the DnD worksheet on Scaffolding diversity Inspired by the Natural Product Evodiamine: Discovery of Highly Potent and Multitargeting Antitumor Agents, written by Shengzheng Wang, Kun Fang, Guoqiang Dong, Shuqiang Chen, Na Liu, Zhenyuan Miao, Jianzhong Yao, Jian Li, Wannian Zhang, and Chunquan Sheng. (You can download the article for yourself at the link above.)

Evodiamine inspired scaffold diversity. (Wang, et al.)

Just to add a few notes to the DnD worksheet itself:

Regarding the Chemistry section, students will not be expected to understand all procedures. Instead, they should gain a general undersatnding of at least half of the sentences as well as become familiar with the language of the discipline. Have the students slowly become familiar with new chemical voabulary and which words to use when. By asking students to define the words, the worksheet allows them to also rewrite in their minds the unfamiliar sentences they encounter in the article with words they are more familiar with. With extended periods of exposure, the goal is to have the words join their normal vernacular when speaking about chemistry or referring to chemical reactions.

Also, since the Results and Discussion section is the longest section in the article by far, the DnD worksheet reflects this.

I hope you enjoy the worksheet and the many more DnD worksheets to come! Please do let me know what you think, suggestions for the types of questions on the worksheet, or if you have any papers you think would be great for another DnD worksheet.

*Not to be confused with Dungeons and Dragons, although that's a great pasttime, too.