Alliance Theater
The Jungle Book Post-Show STEAM Lesson
An ecosystem is really just the flow of energy through many different living organisms. A study of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book leads to an environmental science activity in which learners study how various factors can affect...
NOAA
Understanding Food Chains and Food Webs
Jump into an exploration of marine ecosystems with the first lesson in this four-part series. After first learning about crustaceans, mollusks, and other forms of sea life, young marine biologists view a PowerPoint presentation that...
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Building Ecological Pyramids
Looking for a fresh take on traditional food/energy pyramids? Conduct an innovative activity where pupils build their own! The lesson uses research data from Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique for a real-life safari touch. Scholars...
Curated OER
Marine Ecosystems
Students identify producers and consumers and construct a food chain from four marine ecosystems. They describe the delicate balance among organisms in each environment. In groups, students discuss the human activities that upset the...
Curated OER
How do plant & animal cells make and use energy?
Middle schoolers show the relationship between the need for plants to undergo photosynthesis in order to generate oxygen. They see the flaws associated with this thinking because of the lack of CO2 and H2O and lack of sufficient gravity...
Curated OER
Food webs and Energy Flows
Students become familiar with food chains. For this food chains lesson, students understand that as consumers eat other consumers energy is passed. Students understand the vocabulary associated with food chains.
Curated OER
Exploring Ecosystems
Fourth graders investigate ecosystems. In this ecosystem lesson, 4th graders explore producers, consumers, and decomposers and study the interdependence of each.
Curated OER
Food Webs
Sixth graders discuss and describe consumers and producers. They discuss and describe predator-prey relationship. Students review food chains. They form a circle, and each student is given an ecosystem card. Student at the top is given...
Curated OER
Urban Ecosystems 4: Metabolism of Urban Ecosystems
Cities are compared to living, breathing, metabolizing organisms. Fourth in a five-part series of lessons, this one focuses on the flow of materials through a city. Links to interesting websites and images make your delivery of...
Curated OER
The Biogeochemical Cycles
The majority of this presentation is a collection of diagrams and graphs that back your lecture on biogeochemical cycles. The last few slides define ecosystems and the Gaia hypothesis. You may find these slides valuable, but will...
KOG Ranger Program
The Value of Oregon’s Forests
No matter where you go, you're in the middle of a forest in some way. Use a lesson about forests and the many ways they contribute to our world, including the ecosystems of animals and plants living in their shady soil.
Curated OER
Ecosystems
Students work in small groups to create a poster illustrating the flow of energy through a typical ecosystem, then present their posters to the class.
Curated OER
Links in a Food Chain
Little ones make costumes and act out a rhyme in which there are daisies, bugs, wrens, snakes, and foxes that all interact in a food web. This would be a memorable activity for primary life scientists to participate in as a wrap-up to a...
Curated OER
What A Tangled Web We Weave
Learners of many ages discuss how all organisms rely on other organisms for their survival. They construct a food web and energy pyramids, and write an informative essay about the food web that they have designed.
Curated OER
Coral Reefs Endangered
Students identify different types of nutritional relationships in a coral reef system and trace the energy flow. For this marine biology lesson students create a simulation of acidification of the coral reef.
Curated OER
Food Chains & Food Webs
Tenth graders examine how energy is lost through different trophic levels. In this trophism lesson students construct a food web and view a video.
Curated OER
The Many, Varied, and Unusual Places and Things on Earth
Students discover how energy flows through communities because of the relationship between producers, consumers and decomposers. Examining various ecosystems, they identify the materials that cycle continuously through them. They label...
Columbus City Schools
Biome Basics with a Disastrous Twist
Bored with your current biome bag of tricks? This bundle is a bountiful bag of biome fun! Travel the globe with seventh graders and explore the biotic and abiotic factors that define our world's biomes. Then, introduce a little chaos to...
Curated OER
Pond Ecology
A lab activity is a great way to incite thoughtful questioning and scientific processes. Pupils will collect organisms with a Petri dish, make observations, sketch the organism, ask questions, then attempt to identify the specimen...
Consortium for Ocean Science Exploration and Engagement (COSEE)
Arctic Smorgasbord
Though the walrus spends roughly one third of its time on land, it eats organisms that live on the bottom of the ocean. The first in a series of five, the lesson uses a variety of plant and animal cards to have scholars build an arctic...
Curated OER
What makes up YOUR Environment!
Students create their own land or water environment. They make their environment livable for all the different animals they collect to put in it. Students research the types of animals that they can have in their environment, and how...
Curated OER
Let's Create an Ecosystem
Seventh graders discover how an ecosystem works by creating one in class. In this Earth science lesson plan, 7th graders study vocabulary terms associated with ecosystem and read environment handouts. Students create an observatory...
Curated OER
Let's Create An Ecosystem
Seventh graders create ecosystems in a jar which they observe over the course of the school year.
Channel Islands Film
Human Impact on the Food Web of Santa Cruz Island
What happens when a non-native species is introduced onto an island? Santa Cruz Island, part of the Channel Island chain located off the coast of southern California, provides the perfect laboratory for young environmental scientists to...