Lesson Planning

Waynesburg University
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Pennsylvania Academic Standard(s) addressed during this lesson:
(Provide Standard number and statement)

4.6.4.A Understand that living things are dependent on nonliving things in the environment for survival.

Lesson Objective(s)
(Stated in observable and measurable terms)

Students will create a Glogster Poster using uploaded images, arrow clip-art, and text to depict the order of a food chain, including the sun, a
producer, a primary consumer, and at least one secondary consumer.

Assessment Plan
(What will be done to determine if lesson objectives have been met?)

Students will individually create and print a Glogster Poster that fulfills the lesson objective.

Materials:
In classroom: Food Chains intro movie, projector.
In computer lab: one computer per student pair.

Inclusion Techniques for Students with Special Needs:

Assistance finding pictures and placing them on page.

Enrichment Techniques:

As an introduction to food webs, allow students who finish early to expand on their chain, adding branching paths on their chain.

Lesson Differentiation (What modifications/accommodations will be made to ensure that ALL students have access to and are able
to participate in the lesson):
Working in pairs, assistance finding pictures, opportunities for second movie, alternate ecosystems.

Lesson Presentation
Introduction/Motivational Activities/Anticipatory Set:
Review definitions of producer, consumer, primary consumer, secondary consumer, and decomposer.
State that today we will be talking about food chains, ways to put producers and consumers in order. Emphasize that, like a real chain,
every living thing is connected to another.
Introduce YouTube video, Food Chains song (see Weebly site for embedded video). Before showing, note that calories are a way that
we can measure energy, that students should listen for the terms we talked about the previous day.

Note that our goal will be to create a food chain video using Glogster, and show sample (see Week 2). Explain that this will be a project
done on your own, and that students may want to start thinking about what ecosystem they want to make their food chain in (pond,
underwater, arctic, desert, forest, backyard, etc)

Detailed Teaching Sequence:

(Provide sufficient detail that would enable a substitute to effectively present this lesson. Bulleted statements are preferred)

First, have students use an on-desktop or bookmarked link to http://www.sxc.hu/, Stock.xchng, a free stock photo site. On a clean
sheet of paper, student pairs will draw a rough sketch of what living things they will use in their chain and ensure that Stock.xchng has
images for them to use. They will need to briefly show this outline of their food chain to the teacher before saving photos. Chains
should make sense within the ecosystem they describe, as should the order.
 After teacher approval, students will search for their sun/producer/consumer images, pick one for each animal, and save each in their
class folder with the name of the sun/producer/consumer as the file name.

After all pictures have been collected, students will open the on-desktop or bookmarked link to http://edu.glogster.com/ (Glogster),
where they will log in and open a fresh page. Students will be limited to 20 minutes to work. They must have their pictures, arrows, and
text in place within the first ten minutes.
The poster should include the following:
Name
Title
At least four elements in their chain, including the sun, a producer, a primary consumer, and at least one secondary consumer.
Labels for each of these elements.
Each element should be connected by arrows to show how energy transfers.
Brief definition of food chain.
Brief explanation of energy transfer among elements, including percent of energy transferred.

After which, they may use the remaining time to focus on design or expanding to create the first branches of a food web.

Roughly five minutes before the end of the lesson, all students will be prompted to right-click and select to print their glogster. Then
they will turn it in to the teacher to be graded. They will save their Glogster so that the teacher may bring it up the following day in the
classroom.

Guided Practice/Independent Practice/Assessment Activities

Development of Glogster.

Students will present their Glogster to the class the following day, offering a narration of what each part does, and if it is the sun, a
producer, a primary consumer, or a secondary consumer. If the student has produced several, they may pick their best one to share.
Rubric will assess the extent to which students have accurately used terminology in their presentation, accurately produced a viable
food chain, used pictures that reflect the living thing they discuss, and select living things that accurately exist within their established
ecosystem.

Closure:
Orally review vocabulary terms (sun, producer, primary consumer, secondary consumer, decomposer, food chain), and give students
consideration question: Do animals always eat the same food all the time? Is a straight line the best way to show this, or is there a
better way?