The Food Chains and 1 to 1

Last week I had the opportunity to sit in on a seventh grade science class where students were examining the concepts of food chains, food webs, and energy pyramids. As I sat in the classroom, I realized that I knew what a food chain was, however, I was unclear as to what a food web or energy pyramid looked like.  After some group discussion, students drew concept maps of each on the board.

The food chain was a basic linear model that we would all understand: plants are eaten by small animals, who are eaten by animals, who are ultimatly eaten by those at the top of the food chain.

A student built on this model by noting that some animals eat each other and so a web of interconnected animals and plants was sketched out.

The final representation, that of the energy pyramid displayed the amount of energy each animal could draw from consuming the one below it.

Students captured this information on their laptops and used the build in calculators to calculate the energy consumed at each level.



I have included a screen shot of one student's notes taken during the class.