This is a fun idea to add to your unit on ecosystems. Make a life-sized version of an ocean food web for students to work their way through. How fun is this!
Setting Up
Print off the photos and at least 9 arrows. Set up the food web in a large open space. You can use sidewalk chalk instead of the paper arrows to make the area even larger for your whole class. You can draw large circles around each organism with sidewalk chalk so students know where to stand.
Idea #1
Students each represent a unit of energy. Where did they come from before arriving at the phytoplankton? Allow students to take any path they choose as long as they follow the arrows. Along the way, students record where they went. Then, students write about how energy was transferred.
Idea #2
Students are each a unit of energy. They begin at Phytoplankton. Leave 3 students at phytoplankton. The rest move to krill. At this point, the group separates into 3 groups. Group #1 moves to jellyfish. Group #2 moves to the squid. Group #3 stays at the krill.
Group #1 at the jellyfish separates into two groups. One stays at the jellyfish and the other moves on to the loggerhead. Again, separate the group at the loggerhead into 2 groups. One group stays behind and the other moves to the orca.
Group #2 at the squid separates into 3 groups again. 1/3 go to the orca. 1/3 go to the tuna. 1/3 stays at the squid. Lastly, half of the group at the tuna goes to the orca and half of the group at the tuna stays there.
Finally, talk about what happens to all of the energy when those organisms die. Where does it go? Into decomposers! Break out the bacteria card and have everyone join together again there.
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8 thoughts on “Step on it! A life-sized food web”
Fianlly! This is just what I was looking for.
This is awesome. I was looking for ways to bring this unit into an observation type exercise. My kiddos will love this, so will my administrators!
Hi Ari, could I ask for some help. I’m a fully self contained teacher for middle schoolers. I have an assignment on ecosystems to complete with my students; however the final assignment needs to be on a DOK 3 level. Please LMK if you could help. Thanks Sheri
Hi Ari!
I wanted to share a variation my teaching partner and I tried with this lesson that worked really well and had our 5th grade students making really good connections! We paired the students up and assigned each pair one of the organisms in your food web. The students were given 15 minutes to research their organism to find out what its role is in the ecosystem, and where it gets its energy from. We then had them work together to create the food web by talking about their research. Their conversations were so good! Once they had put the food web together, we “walked” through the web using Idea #2 so they could see how the energy is distributed. We used the response page and follow-up as a conclusion and had them add that to their science notebooks. This was such a great activity! I saw lightbulbs going off the whole time! Thank you so much for sharing it!