3.5 The student will investigate and understand relationships among organisms in aquatic and terrestrial food chains. Key concepts include a) producer, consumer, decomposer; Content
b) herbivore, carnivore, omnivore; and
c) predator and prey.
Activity The objective of this lesson is to show the relationship of
organisms in aquatic and terrestrial food chains. Students will also have good understanding, once the lesson is complete, of what producers, consumers, decomposers, herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores are. The students will also understand the relationship between predatory and prey. To begin with, the teacher will introduce the students to organisms in aquatic and terrestrial food chains by reviewing the SMART Notebook lesson provided in the link below. The lesson will begin with the teacher showing the students the various living and nonliving organisms in an ecosystem on the SMART Notebook lesson. Various living and nonliving organisms on the lesson include fish, sun, snowflake, butterfly, strawberry, etc. The students will draw a line from the picture of the living or nonliving organism and put it under the column labeled “living” or “nonliving” on the SMART Notebook lesson. Once the students are finished, the teacher will discuss which answers are correct or incorrect, if any. The teacher will continue the lesson by providing what producers, consumers, and decomposers are in the ecosystem and what roles they play. The teacher will continue further by showing the students on the SMART Notebook lesson what the three kinds of consumers are: herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores. The teacher will then ask the students to draw various pictures of herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores. The students will share their drawings with the class. The teacher will read a short story on predator and prey followed by a lesson on the food chain. The teacher will show the example of a food chain on Pedagogy
the SMART Notebook lesson and then ask students to come up
with their own food chain. The teacher will put students in groups of four and ask the students to compose a food chain in their group. Starting with the sun, the students will have to agree on what comes next and so forth. Once the students write down on their paper what producers, consumers, herbivores, or carnivores are in their food chain, the students will then draw their food chain using paper and colored pencils. The students will label all of the parts of their food chain. Next, the teacher will review a food web on the SMART Notebook lesson by showing them the food web provided. The teacher will show a food web on the SmartBoard and ask students to draw lines from one producer, consumer, carnivore, herbivore, or omnivore to the other. The teacher will call on students one at a time. The teacher will then ask the students various questions on the food web. An example question would be, “What would happen if there were no more dragonflies at the pond? Which animals would decrease at the pond?” or “What would happen if there was a drought and all of the pond water dried up? What animal would be affected first?” The teacher will ask the students to raise their hands when they know the answers and then the teacher will call on different students to provide the answers and then providing feedback when necessary.