To foster the connection between biochemistry and the supporting prerequisite concepts, a collection of activities that explicitly link general and organic chemistry concepts to biochemistry ideas was written and either assigned as pre-class work or as recitation activities. We assessed student learning gains after using these activities alone, or in combination with regularly-integrated clicker and discussion questions. Learning gains were determined from student performance on pre- and post-tests covering key prerequisite concepts, biochemistry course exams, and student self-evaluation. Long-term retention of the material was assessed using a comprehensive exam given to a subset of the students. Our results show that using the pre-class exercises in combination with integrative questions was effective at improving student performance in both the short and long term. Similar results were obtained at both a large research institution with large class enrollments and at a private liberal arts college with moderate enrollments.