What’s for Dinner?
Project Wild
Objective
TEKS 5.9B Describe how the flow of energy derived from the Sun, used by producers to create
their food, is transferred through a food chain and food web to consumers and decomposers.
TEKS 4.9A Investigate that most producers need sunlight, water and carbon dioxide to make
their own food, while consumers are dependent on other organisms for food
TEKS 3.9B Identify and describe the flow of energy in a food chain and predict how changes in a
food chain affect the ecosystem such as removal of frogs from a pond or bees from a field.
TEKS 2.9C Compare and give examples of the ways living organisms depend on each oth4er and
on their environments such as food chains within a garden, park, beach, lake and a wooded
area.
TEKS 1.9C Gather evidence of interdependence among living organisms such as energy transfer
through food chains and animals using plants for shelter.
Materials
Paper and pencil (crayons or colored pencils are optional)
Background
NOTE: The concepts in this activity are reinforced using pictures and verbal language skills and
may be used effectively with English Language Learners.
Food webs are just one of nature’s many cycles. In a food web, omnivores, herbivores, and
carnivores comprise the organisms in an ecological community that ensures the continuation of
food energy from one organism to another. These webs are made up of individual food chains.
In a gazing web, materials typically pass from plants to herbivores (plant eaters) to carnivores
(flesh eaters). The food web can be view not only as a network of chains but also as a series of
trophic (nutritional) levels. Green plants (primary producers of food) belong to the first level.
Herbivores (consumers of green plants) belong to the second trophic level. Carnivores
(predators feeding upon the herbivores) belong to the third. Omnivores (consumers of both
plants and animals) belong to the second and third. Secondary carnivores (predators that feed
on predators) belong to the fourth trophic level.
Animals including people, either consume plants directly or depend on other species that, in
turn, depend on plants.
Procedure
1. Ask students to make a list of everything that they had for dinner (or lunch) on a
particular day.
2. Ask the students to work alone or in groups to analyze where their food comes from.
Every item from their dinner or lunch comes from. Every item that they ate should be
tracked to a plant.
3. Ask students to create a flow diagram or chain that shows the major sources of each
food—from the product they eat all the way back to the plant origin (e.g. milk, cow,
grass). Chains will be different sizes. Sometimes students may not be sure what
particular animals eat for food, so they will want to do some research.
4. Discuss with students about what they learned from this activity. First, have students
Turn and Talk with their partner. Then, have them write two generalizations about
plants and animals. These generalizations may include that all animals, including people
and wildlife, need food; all animals, including people and wildlife, depend of plants for
food.
Extensions
1. Make posters of the flow charts that students created based on their meal. Add soil,
water and sun, and air, because those are necessary to plants, people, and all animals.
2. Create a master list of all the plants that were identified during the activity. Are there
some plants that we are more dependent on than others?
Evaluation
1. Construct at least three food chains using the following organisms: people, rabbits,
grass, lettuce, mountain lions, robins, earthworms, hawks, mice, insects, wheat, cows,
corn, pigs, deer and acorns.
2. Use food chain links and connect as many as you can to build a food web.