Making a Food Web

Summary

Students will build a food web and see how organisms are interconnected within the web.

Materials

pictures of animals (attached)
• student sheet (attached)

Instructional Procedures

1. Run off and laminate a set of the animal pictures. Cut them out and tape on a string loop to hang from each student's neck. Better yet, have the students create the loop.
2. Give each student one card. Randomly hand the producer and consumer cards out so that they are spread evenly around the room.
3. Start with the sun and have that student hand the string to a producer. They must explain why they hand it to the student they pick. The student with the yarn must pass it to a student that depends on it and so on. Students should include every organism in the web.
4. When every organism is connected, ask the students to pull gently and take in the slack on the string. Explain that this is a food web and is much simpler than most in nature.
5. Ask one student to slacken the tension on their string to become "extinct". Explain to the class what kind of environmental conditions are making it difficult for that animal to survive. Ask the students who feel the difference in the string to raise their hands. Count them and write it on the board next to the animals' name that went extinct. Create two or three more scenarios and count the affected students. Be sure to include a carnivore, they have a surprising affect on food webs.
6. Have students record the data and answer the analysis questions.

Bibliography

Lesson Design by Jordan School District Teachers and Staff.