Food Fight
In this food web activity designed for grades 4-6, participants utilize images of different animals to determine their relationships within an ecosystem, identify predator-prey connections and construct a comprehensive food web.
What You Need
Materials
- Animal photographs (cut out and laminated, or digital)
- Blackboard, smartboard, flip chart, poster board, etc. to draw and display flow chart
- Tape, sticky tacks
Guide:
What To Do
- Draw the Food Fight flow chart on a blackboard, smartboard, flipchart, etc. based on the Food Fight- Answer Key Card, leaving blanks instead of species names.
- On the outer brackets, put up pictures of the animals as per the answer key.
- For each pairing, ask learners which animal they think eats the other.
- Have learners move the animal they think is the predator up to the bracket, following the line.
- Move onto the newly created set of pairings once the first round is complete.
- Continue asking learners to identify the predator and move it to the next round until just one animal remains.
- If there are incorrect answers, correct the lowest brackets and have learners try again,
- Congratulate learners on finding the top predator!
Special Considerations
- The animals in the provided Food Fight kit may not be geographically or culturally relevant to the community. If possible, use a food web relevant to the community for the activity.
- If incorrect answers are given, ask learners their reasoning.
- This workshop should take 45-60 minutes to complete. Have more time? Have students create a food web from the Food Fight information.
Optional:
Ask students to consider the Barred owl, an invasive species to the native Northern spotted own in southern British Columbia. These owls live in old forests that are reducing in size due to fires, deforestation and disease. Conservation efforts for old forest habitats continue. Barred owls successfully compete with spotted owls for food because they are more adaptable and aggressive.
- How would the students change the flow chart to represent the Barred owl's relationship in the ecosystem as an invasive species?
- What does this tell students about the role of invasive species in a particular ecosystem?
Optional: How might climate change (long-term changes in temperature, different precipitation patters, etc.) affect interspecies relationships in the food web?
- For example, ask students to consider which organisms in the ecosystem might be more vulnerable to climate change based on their physical characteristics (e.g. shells, feathers, wings, moisture levels on skin, etc.).
- You can also split students into groups. Ask them to research one effect of climate change on a single organism in the food web, and then present their findings to the class. How might the effect on one organism affect the entire ecosystem?
Discovery
The dynamic interactions among organisms becomes evident while examining primary producers, consumers and predators. The tropic levels of the ecosystem and the interdependence between organisms can be examined through this analytical process. The identification of top predator emphasizes its critical role in regulating the population of lower trophic levels. This exercise aims to provide an understanding of ecological relationships, showcasing how the delicate balance among species contributes to the overall health and sustainability of the ecosystem.
Conservationists and wildlife biologists develop and examine food webs to understand the relationships between organisms in an ecosystem. The introduction of invasive species due to the shifting of habitats as a result of climate change makes their work even more important to ensure the survival of biodiversity in balanced and thriving ecosystems.
For younger students, you can consider the following activity to help them understand food web relationships through role-playing (use the Animal & Ecosystems Manual) for introductory discussion prompts for younger ages):
Materials:
- Species name tag (or Sun/Water) or picture representation.
- Have students stand up and form a circle.
Instructions:
- Have group stand in a circle.
- Each person in circle wears a tag that identifies them as an organism or element in nature.
- The leader stands in the middle of the circle and begins the game by handing the end of the yarn to the sun and then to water.
- Ask what needs water and sun to grow - hand a piece of string to all of the plants, etc. in the circle. Be sure they do not let go of their yarn.
- What eats plants? Continue making connections until everyone in the circle is holding onto a piece of the yarn and the middle of the circle looks like a big tangled web.
Part 2:
- Introduce disease. E.g. what if disease killed all of the voles? Who would be affected? Those directly affected drop their yarn.
- Observe the effects . What if disease affected the willow trees?
- Experiment with how the web is affected (e.g. climate change, temperature changes, precipitation patterns, fires, habitat loss, pollution, etc.) to get across the point that all living things depend on other things and elements in order to survive.
What's Happening?
The dynamic interactions among organisms becomes evident while examining primary producers, consumers and predators. The tropic levels of the ecosystem and the interdependence between organisms can be examined through this analytical process. The identification of top predator emphasizes its critical role in regulating the population of lower trophic levels. This exercise aims to provide an understanding of ecological relationships, showcasing how the delicate balance among species contributes to the overall health and sustainability of the ecosystem.
Why Does it Matter?
Conservationists and wildlife biologists develop and examine food webs to understand the relationships between organisms in an ecosystem. The introduction of invasive species due to the shifting of habitats as a result of climate change makes their work even more important to ensure the survival of biodiversity in balanced and thriving ecosystems.
Investigate Further
For younger students, you can consider the following activity to help them understand food web relationships through role-playing (use the Animal & Ecosystems Manual) for introductory discussion prompts for younger ages):
Materials:
- Species name tag (or Sun/Water) or picture representation.
- Have students stand up and form a circle.
Instructions:
- Have group stand in a circle.
- Each person in circle wears a tag that identifies them as an organism or element in nature.
- The leader stands in the middle of the circle and begins the game by handing the end of the yarn to the sun and then to water.
- Ask what needs water and sun to grow - hand a piece of string to all of the plants, etc. in the circle. Be sure they do not let go of their yarn.
- What eats plants? Continue making connections until everyone in the circle is holding onto a piece of the yarn and the middle of the circle looks like a big tangled web.
Part 2:
- Introduce disease. E.g. what if disease killed all of the voles? Who would be affected? Those directly affected drop their yarn.
- Observe the effects . What if disease affected the willow trees?
- Experiment with how the web is affected (e.g. climate change, temperature changes, precipitation patterns, fires, habitat loss, pollution, etc.) to get across the point that all living things depend on other things and elements in order to survive.
Resources