Bio-Coding Club Curriculum
Welcome to the Bio-Coding Club curriculum. The goal of this curriculum is to give educators all the tools needed to run successful student-driven coding projects related to biology – and to boost student interest in STEM by making science fun.
The ӳý created the Bio-Coding Club, in collaboration with Putnam Avenue Upper School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as an after-school program to teach students in grades 6-8 about both biology and coding. The club met weekly for 75 minutes. A team of professional scientists, all volunteers from the ӳý, served as mentors. Club meetings generally started with a snack and a discussion of a biology topic. Students then took part in a hands-on activity before moving on to practice coding with the coding language Scratch ().
Click below to download the lessons, and keep checking back for new modules that will be published.
The suggested order for utilizing the core Bio-Coding Club curriculum is outlined below, but sticking to this order is not strictly necessary.
In addition to the core curriculum, extension units are currently in production to provide more advanced computing lessons as an addendum to the original curriculum, after students have gained familiarity with coding in Scratch. These extension units can also be completed in place of the beginner-level lessons if students are already advanced in Scratch.
Are you an educator interested in starting your own Bio-Coding Club? Visit to learn how you can get sponsored to start your own Club chapter.
Questions? Email osei@broadinstitute.org
This module consists of 6+ lessons about the human microbiome with hands-on activities that introduce students to genetics and the effect microbes have on human health. Activities are paired with a Scratch project that challenges students to create a bacterium and then code it to move through a maze to get to a food source. The lessons you’ll find here are suggestions; they can be modified to fit your program’s resources and students.
This module consists of 6+ lessons about infectious disease with hands-on activities about epidemiology, herd immunity, handwashing, and vaccine development. Each activity is paired with a self-contained Scratch project that can be personalized or made more complex if time or interest allows. The lessons you’ll find here are suggestions; they can be modified to fit your program’s resources and students.
This module consists of 9+ lessons that aim to give students a sturdy body of knowledge about DNA and genetics that they can carry with them as they explore biology in the future. Students will learn what DNA looks like, what it does, and how we obtain DNA sequences. Each activity is paired with a self-contained Scratch project that can be personalized or made more complex if time or interest allows.
This module consists of 7+ lessons about neuroscience with hands-on activities that teach students how the human brain works. Topics covered include neurons, the link between vision and taste, the "sixth" sense, optical illusions, and more. Each activity is paired with a self-contained Scratch project that can be personalized or made more complex if time or interest allows. The lessons you’ll find here are suggestions; they can be modified to fit your program’s resources and students.
This module consists of 5+ lessons about evolution with hands-on activities that introduce students to evolutionary time, phylogenetic trees, natural selection, adaptation, and gene editing. Each activity is paired with a self-contained Scratch project that can be personalized or made more complex if time or interest allows.
This module is an optional 5-lesson extension to the Microbiome Unit that incorporates the Lego Spike Prime robots. Students can expand on the code they created in the Microbiome Unit to move their Spike Prime robot “bacterium” through their own real-world maze. Students have the option of coding their robots in a block-based language or with Python. Using Bluetooth technology that connects laptops to the robots, students will see the code on their computers come to life. This extension was made possible through a generous sponsorship from Intel.
