Ecosystems Curriculum

Section 1: Reinforcement Activities

Food Web Dominoes

Students set up dominoes to illustrate food web feeding relationships. Then they explore what will happen as certain ones are knocked over. Instead of always knocking over the first one, students should be encouraged to experiment with knocking over different ones. A variation is to set up a complex branching system and to challenge a classmate to predict what will go over and what will not when certain dominoes are pushed. You will need to create a set of dominoes with pictures of the sun and food web organisms. Large size dominoes can often be found in stores that sell games. The pictures for the Web of Life cards can be copied and glued to the dominoes.

Food Web Connections Game

Students aim to construct food webs with as many levels and connections as possible. Each player gets six cards to set up in a web. These cards may be producers, consumers and decomposers. Players draw cards in turn and add them to their food web, while trying to build extensive connections as well as multiple levels of connections. Students will quickly discovers that the producer cards are important to have. When the cards run out, whoever has the web with the most levels and/or connections wins. Students are encouraged to consider a set of reflection questions to help them see how aspects of the game mimic food web interactions. Detailed directions and playing cards can be found in Resources for Section 1.

Replaying the Web of Life Game

When you have completed the lesson, or when you are further along in the module, replay The Web of Life game using the language that students have learned to talk about the relationships in terms of food webs, domino cause and effect, food chains, and so on. Encourage students to view the entire web collapsing as similar to a set of dominoes where the first one is pushed and many branching connections then fall, too. What events can students come up with that could cause such a collapse? Another possibility is to play the game again, this time having the students direct each other.

Measuring the Heat in a Compost Bin

An excellent way to see where some of the energy from the sun "ends up" after it goes through the food web domino is to take the temperature of the thermal energy in a compost bin and to compare it to the air temperature or to the temperature of other solids in the vicinity. Discuss with students where they think the heat comes from. Help them to see it as a transformation of some of the energy that was transferred through the food web.