Unit 1: Food Webs:

Lesson 1: Who’s Top Dog?

Grade Level: First Grade

Time Required: 45 minutes

NOTE: This activity involves a string game and may not be suitable to play during the growing season in the Diné culture.

Primary AZ State Standards:

(Cross-reference “Standards Matrix” for full listing)

Science:

S01-S4C3-03: Describe how plants and animals within a habitat are dependent on each other.

Objective(s):

Students will observe the interdependency of plants and animals in a shared habitat by reading a story and creating a web of life.

Background Information:

After discussing habitats in Unit 1, students should already have an understanding of the interdependence between animals and plants. However, this lesson provides a fuller, in-depth look at the web of life related to food.

Because there is a lot of vocabulary in this lesson, the activity is front-loaded with vocabulary exercises to help students comprehend the reading. And so you know what you are talking about, here is a quick explanation of all the terms:

Web of Life: The interconnected and intricate (web-like) relationships between

plants and animals in relation to food.

Food Chain: A linear model of relationships between plants and animals where

plants are near the bottom and humans and other large predators are at the

top. However, this activity seeks to disprove the linear thinking of food chains!

Habitat: A community of plants and animals where living things eat, live, and

reproduce.

Endangered Species: A species whose population numbers are so low, they

are in danger of becoming extinct.

Herbivores: Animals or insects that only eat plants.

Carnivores: Animals or insects that primarily eat meat.

Omnivores: Animals or insects that eat meat or plants.

Predator: Something that lives by hunting, eating, or destroying animals or

insects

Prey: The animal or insect that is hunted and killed.

Scavenger: An animal that feeds on dead or rotting animals and insects

Competitor: Living things that are fighting or competing against one another

for a resource.

Ultimately, all of this information about the web of life ties back to gardens. Not only do gardens create much needed green space and natural habitat for wildlife, but plants are the building blocks of all of life as we learn in this activity. Growing gardens helps us understand our part of the web of life, gives us food security, and provides people with real-life connections to the variables that can affect food webs (i.e. good stewardship of the environment versus trashing the earth with pesticides, herbicides, and other toxic nasties.)

Pre-lesson Preparation:

  1. Cue up computer to website
  2. Cut up Appendix 1A - animal and insect cards.

Activity Instructions:

Vocabulary front-loading activity, charades

Whole group & pair work

20 minutes

Procedure(s):

  1. Tell students, “How many of you have seen a spider’s web before? Today, we are going to listen to a story, told by a spider,” (pull out hand puppet), “about how we are all connected, how you are even connected to worms and mosquitos! But first, we have to talk about a bunch of words that might be new to you… but maybe not! Let’s see what you guys already know.”
  2. Write on the board or paper all of the vocabulary words. Ask students to raise their hands if they know what the words mean. Call on pairs of students, with hands raised, to come up and whisper the meaning into your ear. If they get it right, ask them to act it out as a team to the rest of the class. If no one knows, choose 2 volunteers and coach them as needed. The rest of the class has to explain what they are doing and figure out the meaning of the word.
  3. After each word is explained, put up the correlating picture from Appendix 1B.
  4. Explain that relating pictures to words is one strategy for learning new words. Leave these illustrated words up throughout the rest of the activity so students can refer back to them.

Web activity

Whole group

25 minutes

  1. Explain to the students , “As you are listening to the story told by the spider, think about who is eating who! Everyone will get a card with an animal, plant, or insect. Listen for your card in the story. When you hear your card, raise your hand, and we’ll figure out how to weave our web with you in it.”
  2. Pull up the website. Read to students, pausing to ask them to retell events and explain the web, asking students to relate events to experiences in their life. For example, has anyone seen a spider catch a bug? Has anyone seen another animal hunting? Has anyone seen a caterpillar eating a leaf? Has anyone gone hunting or fishing?
  3. As students hear their animals, plants, or insects, throw the ball of string to them, holding on to the end. Continue this process until everyone is connected.

Note: I’ve included some extra cards not included in the story such as flies (maggots) and worms. These can be pulled in at the end as decomposers because they eat dead and decomposing plants and animals. If you need even more cards, have students brainstorm some local plants, animals, and insect with which they are familiar.

  1. Now that the web is built, ask students to make observations. Ask them,

How are all of these things connected? Because the animals and plants depend on each other for food.

Who is at the top? No one! Point out that the food chain is not an accurate way of viewing the natural food system. Everything is interconnected.

  1. Tell students, “In the real world, things happen sometimes. Not always nice things. Can you think of some things that might happen to our web of life?”

Natural disasters: fire, floods, earthquakes, mudslides.

Pollution: water (oil), air, land pollution kills animals plants or destroys habitat.

Poor choices: clear cutting, overhunting, overharvesting.

  1. Give students scenarios like, “There is a fire and it kills all the oak trees in the forest.” Have students figure out what happens when oak trees drop out of the web by having the oak tree student drop their part of the web. Who else dies? Does another resource get used more heavily as a result?
  2. Ask students, “At the end of the story, it says it is important to save endangered animals? Why is this?” Because every animal is an important part in the web of life.
  3. Ask students, “Is this true for just animals? What would happen in plants disappeared?”(All the animals would eventually die and disappear.) Explain that even though we have been talking about animals so much, it’s important to remember that plants make everything possible.
  4. End the activity with a discussion about gardens and the web of life.

What smaller webs of life are in gardens? Insects, small animals, plants, people!

How can you help the web of life in your garden? Not use pesticides or herbicides that will kill many more things in the web than is necessary. Allow the animals and insects to eat some of the plants, perhaps on the periphery of the garden. Encourage beneficial, predatory insects and animals to be natural protectors of the garden.

Resources:

Online website: