Web Of Life: 5th Grade Science

Sep 11

Preview

Lesson Objective:

This activity is aimed to teach students how to construct and understand the components of a food web in order to grasp the concept of interdependent relationships in ecosystems and how energy transfers within an ecosystem.

The project is specifically geared toward achieving the Grade 5 New Jersey Student Learning Standards for Science performance expectation to develop a model to describe the movement of matter among plants, animals, decomposers, and the environment. This objective is a part of the broader crosscutting concept concerning systems and system models to design and describe a system in terms of its elements and interactions. Additionally, the project assists students in meeting the NJ Mathematical Practice criterion of modeling using quantitative reasoning.

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Materials:

Scissors
Glue
Poster paper/blank paper
Coloring materials
Blank organism card print-outs
Food Web Organizer print-out

Downloadable Lesson Materials

Pre-Activity Set-Up (for Parents and Teachers):

Print one organizer for each student

Print set of organism cards for each student and cut them out
Gather plenty of coloring materials and poster paper!

Note: the organism cards are large so it will be best to use a large sheet of poster paper or to tape four pieces of printer paper together

(Optional) Pre-Activity:

Recommended to review the attached vocabulary sheet beforehand

Vocabulary

Activity:

Note: There is also a walk-through provided in the downloadable material, if needed

Complete the food web organizer

For each term, guide discussion to define how that kind of organism gets energy and brainstorm examples

Ex. Primary consumers get energy by eating plants/producers → Do we know any organisms that eat plants?

Encourage students to think of animals in their area to make the terms feel more personal/concrete

Sketch examples in organizer (Note: these can just be rough pencil sketches)

Challenge students to practice writing the names of each animal next to their drawings.

The completed organizer should include: four producers, three primary consumers, two secondary consumers, one tertiary consumer, and two decomposers

Using the organism cards to create the food web poster: For each organism example,

Draw the organism on the large upper portion of a card with the matching color on the organizer

Ex. Producers are green on the organizer so they should be drawn on a green card

Use the organizer as a reference to draw what that organism eats in the smaller, bottom portion of the card
Work together with the student to organize and glue each card on a blank piece of poster paper.

It may be helpful to use a similar arrangement as that on the organizer

Draw arrows to show the transfer of energy, using the organizer and bottom parts of each card as a guide

Post-Activity Reflection and Discussion:

Consider facilitating a discussion surrounding the key takeaways of the activity:

All organisms are connected through food web through the transfer of energy

This transfer is conveyed through the arrows in the diagram
The NJ Science learning goal emphasizes that the food of almost any kind of animal can be traced back to plants (producers)

Each organism plays a role in ecosystem (producer, primary consumer, etc.) that depends on that particular ecosystem; try particularly emphasizing that

The role each organism plays is not necessarily strict

Ex. secondary consumers can also eat plants

Energy in a food web can be traced back to producers, which create their own energy-rich food molecules from the Sun and other natural materials
Decomposition eventually restores and recycles some materials back to the soil, which can then be used by producers

A healthy, stable ecosystem has a balance of organisms in which multiple species of different types are each able to meet their needs

This is why the largest proportion of the ecosystem should be producers and smallest proportion should be secondary/tertiary consumers, as portrayed in the activity

During the discussion, challenge students to make connections between these lesson takeaways and the activity itself to strengthen their understanding of the topic and enhance diagram comprehension skills; consider the following sample questions to guide the conversation:

Who are the producers in your diagram? Who are the primary consumers, secondary consumers, and tertiary consumers? Who are the decomposers?

Label each on the diagram

Why are there arrows pointing from all of the trophic levels to the decomposers?
Why is there an arrow pointing from the decomposers to the producers?

Do producers eat decomposers or is there another process happening in-between?

Can tertiary and secondary consumers get energy from trophic levels that are not directly beneath them?

Can secondary consumers get energy from eating plants? Can consumers eat other organisms in the same trophic level? Does this happen in your diagram?

Practice the Coloring Confidence affirmation! (see below)

Learning More for Parents:

How dyslexia can affect graphic interpretation in science subjects?

Studies show how people generally spend more time focusing on text features of graph rather than non-text visual information, which can make interpreting a graph challenging for students who have difficulty with text-processing and retrieving information from graphs to understand it (Kim S. et al., 2014). Further research has corroborated that students with dyslexia tend to struggle more with such orthographically-centered graphs (or graphs that are text-heavy) and corresponding questions presented in sentences (Kim, S., & Wiseheart, 2017).
As a result, creating understanding food chains and food webs and the scientific terminology that goes along with them may be difficult, especially when these diagrams include organism names that may be hard to pronounce/read and feel less attached to daily lives (i.e. ‘phytoplankton’).

What can you do to help your child?

Incorporate multisensory learning: These same studies show how students may struggle with certain aspects of graph interpretation with no difference in performance between dyslexic and non-dyslexic learners when interpreting orthography-free graphs (Kim S. et al., 2014). As a result–as per theory behind Coloring Confidence—learning activities that incorporate graphs should emphasize visual, verbal, and hands-on components to help students engage with the topic. This can involve using graphs that use more pictures than words and text, as emphasized in this project.
Individualize the experience: Certain science topics can be difficult to understand when the curriculum is generally text-heavy or abstract. It can help to make these ideas more concrete by personalizing learning activities, such as allowing students to come up with their own examples using organisms in their own environment when developing their food webs. This can enable them to understand the broader concept behind the activity, such as the interdependence within ecosystems, on a deeper level by guiding them to make their own connections and draw their own conclusions.
Provide context: It is recommended to go over the lesson and important vocabulary beforehand and use the project itself as an exemplification of those science concepts. For example, in this activity, it may be beneficial to review the important terms first, then create and classify examples, and finally illustrate them graphically. Such preliminary steps can also be a great opportunity to enhance students’ vocabulary by maintaining a glossary of these important terms that the student can always reference and by practicing spelling and writing with them.