Building Food Chains with Producers and Consumers
About this lesson
Children work in small groups to put sticky notes showing plants and animals into the right order to make food chains. They practise naming producers and consumers and using arrows to show how energy moves from one living thing to the next. You need sticky notes and scrap paper. It takes about 15 minutes.
- Grade
- 3
- Subject
- Science
- Time
- 15 min
- Prep
- 5 min
Objective
Students will arrange three or four living things into a food chain, starting with a producer and using arrows to show the direction energy flows.
Prep
5 min: write food chain sets on sticky notes, one living thing per note, and bundle each set
Materials
- sticky notes
- scrap paper
- pencils
- whiteboard and marker
Steps
- Draw sun → grass → rabbit → fox on the board and explain that plants are producers because they make food from sunlight, animals that eat are consumers, and each arrow means the energy goes to the next living thing.
- Put students in groups of three or four and give each group a mixed-up bundle (for example acorn, squirrel, hawk; grass, grasshopper, frog, snake; algae, tadpole, fish, heron; leaves, caterpillar, robin, hawk).
- Ask groups to stick their notes in order on scrap paper, starting with the producer, then draw arrows between them and label the producer with a P and each consumer with a C.
- Have each group read its chain aloud using the words 'gives energy to', and let the class give a thumbs up or suggest a fix.
- Finish by asking one group what would happen to the rest of their chain if one animal in the middle disappeared, and take two or three ideas.
Quick Check
Write seeds, owl, mouse in a jumbled order on the board and have each student write the correct food chain with arrows on scrap paper and circle the producer.
Differentiation
Make it easier: Give each group only three living things and draw the arrows on the paper ahead of time so they just place the notes.
Make it harder: Give two groups' sets to one group and ask them to connect the chains into a simple food web where one animal eats more than one thing.
Good For
- Before lunch
- Supply teacher
- Review
- End of day
