Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Opening of lesson: Students will have already completed the introductory assignment,
which entailed taking one plant or animal from the designated list, and creating a website
about that organism. The purpose of this assignment is to get students acclimated with
ocean inhabitants, and also do some personal research and technological development
surrounding a topic. The students had already presented their research and findings, and
also have an idea about food web structures based on what organisms theirs consumes
and is consumed by. This aspect of the previous assignment will play a critical role in the
activity for the day, because each student will have to take the knowledge that they have
about their specific organism that they researched because they will be “acting” as that
animal during the classroom simulation and model creation. Students will predict their
place in the larger classroom food web based on research about their organism such as
whether or not it is a herbivore/carnivore, its size, and its location in the ocean
environment.
I will first ask the students some foods that they regularly eat, asking them where does
that food come from. For example, if a student says he/she ate a hamburger the day
before, I will ask where the meat comes from. Then what does the cow eat to get the
energy to live?
I will then ask how many students eat seafood. This will connect the larger food web of
the ocean, extending it to humans.
Then as a class, we will review the following terms:
food web: a way of showing how plants and animals in a habitat depend on each other
habitat: the place where a plant or animal naturally lives or grows; an ecological community
predator: an animal that kills other animals for food
prey: an animal that is hunted by another for food
(taken from http://school.discoveryeducation.com/lessonplans/programs/BP_openocean/)
Procedures: After asking these questions, I will ask the students to think about the
organism they did research about.
Where does that animal gets its energy?
What types of other ocean life would be probable food for your organism?
Is your organism food for any other animals or plants in the ocean?
Students will be asked to answer these questions with a partner for a short period of time.
Once the class comes back together, I will tell the students that they will be taking the
role of their researched organism to create a food web of the organisms of the classroom.
Students will use the picture provided of their organism to complete the following
activity that I will write the directions for on the board:
After thinking again about your organism: Knowing what we know about food webs,
hold the photo of your organism and without talking, attempt to construct a food web in
the classroom.
Students will be expected to work silently as they determine where their animal would be
in the food web, as well as trying to work together with other students and using the
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pictures to guide them. This is not intended to have the students get it correctly the first
time, but they will need to use their own knowledge about their organism to place
themselves in a spot that they see fit. This will take evaluating whether they could
consider the organism before them prey and eat them and whether the organism behind
them be considered a predator and could consume them.
The teacher will walk around and observe the students’ thoughts and help if needed, but
the idea is for the students to generate their own food web.
After the students have come to a temporary conclusion, the teacher will quickly jot
down the order to which they decided and ask them to return to their seats. They will be
asked to take out their science journals and as a class, they will reevaluate the food web
they created, revise, and draw it in their journals. On an overhead projector or
SmartBoard, the teacher will reproduce the food web so it is visible to all students. Once
reproduced, the students will be asked to write the name of their organism at the top of
the page and then 3-4 sentences in their journal explaining why they chose the spot they
did in the order. As students come to a finish completing this part of the journal, the
teacher will ask if all the students agree with the starting point of the food web. This
process will continue on, asking do you think that organism A could consume organism
B, or should they be moved to another location? This will be done for the first 4 or 5
organisms and then the students will be asked to draw the web, in any shape they see fit
(circular, top to bottom, bottom to top, etc) revising any areas. Students are encouraged
to ask questions of their neighbors, and work together collaboratively to come up with
their own final products.
After all students have finished their models, I will ask if any drastic changes need to be
made to the classroom model. Are there any students that think that the placement of
their organism needs to be moved. This will spark a group discussion because if one
student thinks his or her organism needs to be moved and another disagrees, I will ask
that they each justify why he or she thinks that way.
In using the classroom model, I will omit an organism in the web and ask the students to
write in their science journals and evaluate what would happen to the organisms below
and above if that organism were to somehow disappear from the web. They will also be
asked to evaluate what would specifically happen to their organism in this instance. After
students have taken the time to reflect and predict, we will come together as a large
group and I will ask for suggestions to what would happen and why it might happen.
These suggestions will be written on a chart posted in the front of the room.
To emphasize this idea even more, a possible alternative activity could be to have
students actually form the web (or revised web) using a ball of yarn. Students connect to
each other based on the organism that they represent using their ideas. When an
organism "disappears" from the web, the yarn goes limp and it’s easy to see how the
whole web can be impacted.
Emily Trapp
Student Assessment: Students will be informally assessed throughout the activity using
the following rubric:
CATEGOR 4 3 2 1
Y
Additionally, as further topics are explored in the Oceans Unit, student will be asked to
continually modify this model. In the final lesson about ocean pollution, students will
include their models in their newspaper articles, noting what would happen to the model of
the web if ocean pollution continued.
I think that this lesson plan shows good examples of modeling because it has the students
creating models both literally by “putting themselves in the shoes of a marine organism” and
also by reflecting on that activity and creating their own model about the food web of marine
organisms. I think that because students are not given any real direction about how their
model should look, it causes them to think critically about what is a logical order and way of
recreating the simulation on paper. In the silent simulation, the students are more or less put
into a line, however in reflecting on the one produced as a whole class, a student might think
that there is more than one predator for a specific prey, and therefore create more of a
pyramid shape or circular web. The students are showing the relationships between the
organisms and are also asked to think about what would happen to the model if there were
missing components. I think that taking the time to evaluate these implications shows students
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the importance of what they are learning, and also the questions in the beginning of the lesson
will continue to perpetuate their thoughts as they evaluate their role as a human being in the
I also think that the conceptual model detailed in my lesson plan helps students to
understand the functions of a food web. It causes them to explore deeper each organisms role
in the marine habitat and predict what might happen if one of the organisms were to become
extinct. By prompting this scenario, students are forced to think about what would happen to
both the predators and the prey of the organisms of the rest of the web. It takes a look at
amplifying one small idea, and looking at the bigger picture that results. Students might
initially think that if krill were omitted from the food chain nothing would really happen, but
in reality, a rich class discussion would show that animals that eat the krill would have to
search for food somewhere else and this process might result in that species numbers (as well
as trickling upward) and whatever krill consumes would begin to overpopulate, and this is