Let’s take a look at teaching 2nd grade and 3rd grade about food chains.
Food chains aren’t just about ”who eats who.” They are about the flow of energy from the Sun to organisms here on Earth.
I ask students to label the arrows with an “E” for energy. The Sun is the source of energy for a food chain.
Here’s a unit idea from start to finish to teach food chains. Find printables.
1. What did you have for breakfast?
Get students thinking about energy by talking about breakfast.
Bring in a cup of yogurt and a piece of fruit to help students visualize the sources energy.
A blueberry gets its energy directly from the Sun. The food chain is :
Sun -> blueberry -> human
Draw food chains for your breakfast or favorite food!
2. Make food chains as a class.
Print out individual pieces of a food chain including arrows and have teams arrange themselves in order.
Look around and see if energy is moving in the correct direction and if the organisms and Sun are in the correct order.
3. Make a cut and paste food chain.
Make a cut and paste food chain on paper or in notebooks and LABEL LABEL LABEL.
This is a great time to introduce vocabulary like producer and consumer.
4. Make a food chain model.
Make an actual food CHAIN complete with energy arrows. Use the printable from Labs in a Snap to make fun food chains. They make great displays!
5. Support a claim.
CER in elementary? You bet. At the 2nd and 3rd grade level, we mostly focus on CE, just the claim and the evidence.
Here is an example of a Claim and Evidence we did to answer the question: Where does the energy in our food come from?
6. Review with a flipbook.
Create flipbooks with essential information on roles in an ecosystem, the Sun as the source of energy, and food chains. Your students are pros now!
7. Practice with food chains task cards.
Do your students think they’ve got food chains down? Put their knowledge to the test with food chain task cards.
Top Teaching Tools
You will be ready to teach in no time with these PRINT AND GO food chains activities.
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