A Big Picture of Cellular Respiration

When we start learning cellular respiration in AP Biology, I pull out my "relic" from college. It's a yellowed piece of 11" by 17" paper dated 9/25/95.  On it is a photocopied, hand-drawn diagram of the process of cellular respiration. Dr. John Azevedo drew the diagram and gave everyone in his Microbiology class a copy.  I wrote notes all over it, and by the end of that class, understood cellular respiration better than I ever had.

Now, every year I teach AP Bio, each of my students gets a photocopied, hand-drawn 11" by 17" diagram.  My hope is that they always have the big picture of cellular respiration in mind as we work through what is happening.  To make it even more concrete, I have punched out several different colored shapes for students to use as molecules going through the process.

I have a whole set of questions that students work through to help understand the diagram better. This is the slide that I put up for them to use to work through the diagram, followed by a set of questions to gauge their understanding of the process.