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Knowledge and Skills Statement

Organisms and environments. The student knows that living organisms have basic needs that must be met through interactions within their environment.

Give students a reading that describes how organisms depend on each other within a specific ecosystem. Ask each student to identify the producers in the article. Students should be able to identify plants as producers. Then ask students to identify one consumer that eats their selected producer. For example, if the student identified grass as the producer in a prairie, they should then identify something like a rabbit or a grasshopper as a consumer who eats grass. Then ask students to identify a second consumer that eats the first consumer they identified. In the prairie example, students might identify a hawk as a consumer of rabbits or a blue jay as a consumer of grasshoppers. Ask students to explain the relationship and energy flow between at least three organisms in the reading by drawing a food chain and writing one or two sentences correctly using the words producer and consumer.
 

An example of a food chain in words and in images is provided below

A food chain with grass, a grasshopper, a lizard, and a snake is shown.

A food chain arranges the organisms in an ecological community according to the order of predation in which each uses the previous member as a food source; may include producers, herbivores, omnivores, and carnivores.  As an educator, it is important to know that herbivores, omnivores, and carnivores are all referred to as consumers at this grade level.

Image Attributions/Location:

Grass: Grass icons created by Iconriver - Flaticon

Grasshopper: Grasshopper icons created by BZZRINCANTATION - Flaticon

Lizard: Iguana icons created by Amethyst prime - Flaticon

Snake: Snake icons created by Culmbio - Flaticon

requirements for life, such as air, water, food, protection, and space

organism that depends on other organisms for food

to be influenced or determined by or subject to something or someone else; reliant on something or someone else for support

a sequence of organisms in an ecosystem that traces the flow of energy from the Sun through each successive organism

an individual form of life; a body made up of organs, organelles, or other parts that work together to carry on the various processes of life

organism such as a plant that make their own food using water, carbon dioxide, and light energy from the Sun  

Research

Keeley, Page. “Formative Assessment Probes: No More Plants: Uncovering Students’ Ideas About Interdependency and Change.” Science and Children 52, no. 8 (2015): 24–25. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43501048. 

Summary: There are several common misconceptions that students make about interdependency and food chains. Students may assume that only the next living thing in a food chain is affected if one organism dies off, not realizing how this would affect the entire food chain. This article explains that early childhood students should understand that all animals depend on plants, even animals that do not eat plants at all. Students need to realize that all animals depend on plants, as in their later grades, they will need to understand that plants are the primary source of energy for animals in food webs. When teaching food chains, teachers should repeatedly trace back to plants at the start of the food chain and ask students other questions about interdependency in an ecosystem.