Energy Flow and the Food Chain

How can you tell what an owl has eaten? Study the food chain and flow of energy in an ecosystem by dissecting an owl pellet and noting the bones found inside. Additionally, the lesson includes a game about consumers and producers with a...

If you need a few basic activities for teaching food chains to your emerging ecologists, here they are. Three sheets of organism cards are included for learners to cut out and arrange according to trophic relationships. To make the most...

Young biologists trace the path of the sun's energy through marine ecosystems in the second part of this four-lesson series. Building on prior knowledge about producers, consumers, and decomposers students are introduced to the concept...

When a minnow eats a piece of plastic, that garbage often tracks through multiple animals, causing harm to each as it passes through the food chain. Scholars learn about food chains, food webs, and energy pyramids with a presentation. It...

Plants. We can't live without them! Bill Nye discusses how every living thing relies on plants using a concept called the food web. In a very visual demonstration, he ties a cord from one picture to another on a three-dimensional...

Students discuss ecosystems, eliciting their current knowledge of an ecosystem. Students receive an Ecosystems document and look at the picture. Students brainstorm connection between the cover picture and ecosystems. The indicated...

Rhinozilla is Mia's bearded dragon and the focus of this lesson on energy flow in an ecosystem. She uses him to explain the energy pyramid, from producers through third level consumers, and she likens the food chain to a video game. Mia...

Explore the food chains that support Arctic ecosystems. A class discussion on interdependence and the different roles plants and animals play in ecosystems provides students with the knowledge to complete a worksheet asking them to...

What is energy, anyway? Use this featurette as an introduction to your middle school energy unit. It successfully touches each of Earth's physical systems, the sun as our main source of energy, and the flow of energy through the food...

A disgusting and direct description of detritus and decomposition is digested in this drill! Your life science class learns about the importance of decomposers in the food chain and finds out how one organism's trash is another...