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In this lesson, students will read a National Science Foundation article that discusses a 200-year study into the mortality of forests. The process of decomposition and the importance of decaying wood in a forest are explained in great detail. The research described has altered and changed the management plans for forest ecosystems worldwide.

This lesson is designed to support reading in the content area. It includes a note-taking guide, a vocabulary guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson is a hands-on, one-day lab that uses candies to simulate biological magnification. Students learn about energy transfer and DDT accumulation through tropic levels in an aquatic ecosystem.

Type: Lesson Plan

This activity is a lab exercise where students look at the passing of water in cups and compare it to the loss of available energy as it moves through an ecosystem. Students will collect data, calculate efficiency, graph the data and respond to reflection questions to connect the data to what happens in an ecosystem. The end of the activity includes a connection to the 10% rule where only 10% of energy from one trophic level is available at the next level.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students create a food web using information about a group of non-existent species. They will use the food web to create food chains and a population pyramid that will show the flow of energy through the food web. Finally, they will explore how changing the population size of one species affects other species, often with unpredicted results. 

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson students will show how energy flows through the ecosystem by constructing a food web, identifying, consumers, producers and decomposers, and the different trophic levels within it.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson plan will give the students the opportunity to use their prior knowledge about food chains and food webs. It will be student centered with the teacher merely being a facilitator the entire class. There are 2 different activities that the teacher has the option to select from. Any of the activities will definitely have the students learning and engaged the entire class.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson has been created to help students show you the pathway of energy transfer through trophic levels by reading assigned stories that take place in ecosystems.  It begins with a detailed lecture with embedded questions. Then they will create a poster in the end with a food web, isolated food chain, and energy pyramid. 

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson students will design a completely imaginary ecosystem that is comprised of producers, consumers, secondary consumers, and decomposers. Students will design the ecosystem by determining the location of the ecosystem and the biotic and abiotic factors in the ecosystem. The students will also include the number of organisms at each trophic level, and any adaptations the organisms must have to live in their ecosystem.

Type: Lesson Plan

Food web
Energy Pyramid
Producers
Consumers

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will learn about trophic levels, energy relationships, and how producers, consumers, and decomposers interact.

Type: Lesson Plan

Learn how living organisms can be organized into food webs and how energy is transferred through a food web from producers to consumers to decomposers. This interactive tutorial also includes interactive knowledge checks.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Explore species interdependence focusing on roles played by periphyton in the Everglades ecosystem with this interactive tutorial.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Patrick Milligan discusses the relationship of organisms in the Kenyan savannah.

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Expert

Dr. Melodie Naja describes the link between agricultural pollutants and the bioaccumulation of methylmercury in the fresh surface waters of the Everglades.

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Expert

Periphyton plays several vital roles in the Everglades. Watch now to find out more!

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Expert

Dr. Tom Miller explains the major roles in food web communities and describes a model system for exploring energy transfer between organisms.

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Expert

Dr. Jeff Holmes from the Harvard University Museum of Comparative Zoology discusses the Encyclopedia of Life as a teaching resource for concepts regarding food webs.

This video was created in collaboration with the Okaloosa County SCIENCE Partnership including the Smithsonian Institution and Harvard University.

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Teaching Idea

It's all connected. Check out this food web lesson idea.

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Teaching Idea

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. The reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone has resulted in many changes in the ecosystem. Before the wolves were reintroduced, large elk populations destroyed aspen and willow trees, preventing their reproduction. Since wolves were reintroduced, elk have had to change their browsing behavior, allowing some vegetation to recover in certain areas. This has affected many other species, including beavers, birds, fish and insects.

Type: Text Resource

Click "View Site" to open a full-screen version. This tutorial is designed to help secondary science teachers learn how to integrate literacy skills into their science curriculum. This tutorial will demonstrate a number of strategies teachers can impart to students to help them use context clues to determine the meaning of unfamiliar words within science texts. It will also help them teach students how to select the appropriate definition from reference materials. The focus on literacy across content areas is intended to help foster students' reading, writing, and thinking skills in multiple disciplines.

Type: Tutorial

When you picture the lowest levels of the food chain, you might imagine herbivores happily munching on lush, living green plants. But this idyllic image leaves out a huge (and slightly less appetizing) source of nourishment: dead stuff. John C. Moore details the "brown food chain," explaining how such unlikely delicacies as pond scum and animal feces contribute enormous amounts of energy to our ecosystems.

Type: Tutorial

This short video opens up the oceans' microscopic ecosystem, revealing its beauty and complexity. Footage from the Plankton Chronicles Project is used to create a video designed to ignite wonder and curiosity about this hidden world that underpins our own food chain.

Type: Tutorial

In this interactive, explore one of the most well-understood mass seedings—that of oak-tree acorn crops—and its widespread effects on various animals in the ecosystem as well as on nearby human populations.

Type: Tutorial

This lesson is about the flow of energy in ecosystems. The setting is Plimoth Plantation, a living history museum in Plymouth, Massachusetts, USA, where students will learn about the first Thanksgiving meal in America, celebrated in 1621 by early American settlers and Wampanoag Indians. By examining this meal and comparing it to a modern day Thanksgiving celebration, students will be able to explore the way in which food energy moves and is transformed in an ecosystem. The learning goals focus on the movement of energy from one feeding level to the next within a food web, the way in which energy changes form, and the inefficiency of energy transfer, which in turn affects the availability of food energy for organisms at the highest feeding level. The lesson is directed at high school level biology students. Students should be familiar already with food webs, food chains, and trophic (feeding) levels. They should also be familiar with the general equations for photosynthesis: 6H₂O + 6CO₂ + Energy(light) -> C₆H₁₂O₆ + 6O₂ and cell respiration: C₆H₁₂O₆ + 6O₂ -> 6H₂O + 6CO₂ +Energy(about 38ATP), and understand the basic purpose of these processes in nature. This lesson can be completed during one long classroom period, or can be divided over two or more class meetings. The duration of the lesson will depend on prior knowledge of the students and on the amount of time allotted for student discussion. There are no supplies required for this lesson other than the downloadable worksheets (accessed on this BLOSSOMS site), paper and some glue or tape. 

Type: Video/Audio/Animation