LS.6.2.1: Use models to summarize how energy derived from the sun is used by…

Food Webs: Who Eats Whom? Grade 5 · partly supports this outcome

Where a plant's food comes from, what happens when the wolves disappear, who cleans up, and how much life hides under a log. Four lessons on how energy and matter move through living things.

• Where does a plant get its food? 50–60 min, plus 10 min to weigh seedlings two weeks later

  Students sink spinach leaf disks in baking soda water and watch them float back up in the light as they make oxygen, then start bean seedlings with no soil at all and weigh them two weeks later. They explain that plants build their food from air and water using light, not from the soil.

• What would happen if the wolves disappeared? 45–60 min

  Students become species in a northern forest or a prairie and connect themselves with yarn into a living food web. When one species is removed, everyone who feels the yarn tug finds out how far the change spreads, and students explain why no species lives on its own.

• Who cleans up? 45 min to set up, 5 min check-ins twice a week, then 30 min after 2 weeks (bread) and 20 min after 4 to 6 weeks (leaves)

  Students seal bread and fruit in taped zip bags to watch mould grow without ever opening them, and bury mesh bags of dry leaves in soil to weigh what's left weeks later. They explain how decomposers break down dead things and return matter to the soil for plants to use again.

Printable practice for LS.6.2.1

• Food Webs: Who Eats Whom? workbook included with the unit

  2 practice pages, 2 readings, 1 word wall, 1 English-support page, 1 unit review, 1 unit test, with answer keys.

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