The Marine Food Chain
Category: Life Science Submitted by: Doreen Graham Topics Covered: Appropriate for grades: 3-7 Estimated duration: 30-60min What will happen: Students will ... be given the opportunity to work cooperatively and explore the food chain of the marine environment. What you need: list of marine animals to sort resource materials that describe various marine animals chart paper small pieces of paper to use in the Food Chain Game What to do: A. Exploring the Food Chain Present information to students/discuss the concept of a food chain. Student teams: given a list of marine animals and microorganisms, sort into a list that would represent a marine life food chain based on the collective knowledge of students in the team. Class: each team one at a time, presents list, teacher facilitating the discussion to prepare the food chain list Student teams: write questions that arose as a result of the class discussion that may be answered through research using the resources available. Research in order to prepare an accurate arrangement of the list of organisms on the marine food chain and confirm knowledge gained during the discussion. Student teams: prepare poster that visually represents the marine food chain using all of the organisms that were given on the list as well as any others discovered from the research/include any answers to the student generated questions. B. The Food Chain Game The purpose of the game is to maintain a stable food chain so that no organism dies out. Discuss with students the abundance of animals and organisms relative to each other and factors that affect the balance. If 100% represents all the animals and organisms on the list, what percent of each animal/organism can be found in the environment? create 100 'game cards' in the same quantity that would realistically represent the marine environment (6 seals, 2 whales, 27 jelly fish, etc.) Play the game - Each student is randomly given a game card and holds it so others can easily see it. All extra cards can be put at an 'origin station'. Then each student wanders around (perhaps at an appropriate speed for that animal/organism) and attempts to locate his/her food. When appropriate food is located (as seen on the game card held by another student/prey) the predator tags his/her prey. The prey that was tagged then gives his/her game card to the predator, goes directly to the origin station where the other cards are kept and takes a different card. The predator that took his/her prey's card keeps it until he/she is prey for another organism at which time he/she is tagged and must give up all his/her cards. The cooperative game is over when there are no cards to take. Debrief the results: What animals where left? Which animals were in abundance? etc. Make any recommendations for alterations to the game/distribution of card, and play as long as there is interest. In the classroom hints:
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