1. Science Focus Lesson SC.4.L.17.3 Food Chains
Elementary Science
Science Focus Lesson
SC.4.L.17.3
Food Chains
TEST ITEM SPECIFICATIONS:
Benchmark Clarifications
Students will describe or explain how energy is transferred from the Sun through a food chain.
Students will explain that plants make their own food using carbon dioxide, water, and energy from the Sun.
Students will explain that animals obtain energy from the plants and/or animals they eat.
Content Limits
Items assessing the flow of energy from the Sun through a food chain are limited to the direction of energy flow. Items will not address or assess the amounts of energy flowing through the food chain or the efficiency of the energy transfers.
Items will not address or assess cellular respiration or any other cellular process.
Items will not address or assess decomposers.
Items will not address or assess food webs, trophic levels, or energy pyramids.
Items will not assess more than five components (links) in a food chain.
Polk County Public Schools

2. SC.4.L.17.3
Benchmark: Trace the flow of energy from the Sun as it is transferred along the food chain through the producers to the consumers.
Essential Question:
What is the relationship between the sun, producers, and consumers?
Vocabulary:
food chain producer consumer
predator prey photosynthesis

3. Energy Transfer All organisms need energy.
The sun is the main source of energy for Earth.
Through photosynthesis, plants convert energy from the sun into food. Animals depend on plants for their food.
It what other ways do animals, including people,
depend on plants?
Talk it over with your shoulder partner.
Animals depend on plants for shelter, oxygen, medicine, protection, source of water, food source (energy)

4. Photosynthesis
Only green plants can convert the Sun’s energy into food!
This process is called Photosynthesis.
Photosynthesis takes place in the leaves of a plant.
Green plants use carbon dioxide, water and energy from the sun to make their own food.
Inside each leaf cell are tiny green structures called chloroplasts. The green color comes from a substance called chlorophyll. Chlorophyll captures the energy in sunlight. The plant’s roots take in water from the soil. Water travels to the plant’s leaves. The leaves take in carbon dioxide from the air. The chloroplasts use the sun’s energy captured by chlorophyll to combine water and carbon dioxide. This produces a kind of sugar called glucose. Glucose is the plant’s food. The process of using the energy in sunlight to produce food for the organism is called photosynthesis.

5. Summarizing
In your science journal, illustrate and label the process by which a green plant makes food from the Sun’s energy. Use these words:
Photosynthesis
Sun’s energy
Carbon dioxide
Water
Photosynthesis can be described as:
Sun’s Energy + Carbon Dioxide + Water = Food

6. Pass the Energy
The path of energy from one organism to another is called a food chain.
Think about what you ate for your last meal. Can you trace your meal back to the sun?
Example:
Sun-grass-cow-student

7. Links in the chain…
Producers are organisms that use the sun’s energy to make their own food. Plants are producers.
Consumers are organisms that cannot make their own food. They get their energy to stay alive and grow by eating other organisms. All animals are consumers.
The arrows show how energy flows through an ecosystem.
Why is the grasshopper the primary consumer?
Energy
IMPORTANT: Emphasize that the arrows show the FLOW OF THE ENERGY THROUGH THE SYSTEM. Often on assessments students get the flow backwards because they are thinking in terms of who eats who…wrong direction!
The grasshopper is the PRIMARY consumer because it eats the producer (the first consumer in the chain)
Energy
Energy
Energy
Primary
consumer
producer
consumer
consumer

8. Some consumers eat other consumers
A predator is an animal that hunts, catches and eats other animals
Prey is an animal that is hunted, caught, and eaten by another animal
Energy
prey
predator
Energy

9. Special kinds of consumers
Carnivores are animals that eat other animals
Alligators are carnivores, they eat fish, birds, turtles, snakes, mammals, and amphibians (this alligator has a deer!).
Herbivores are animals that eat only plants or plant products.
Manatees are herbivores, they eat over 60 different plant species such as mangrove leaves, turtle grass, and algae
Omnivores are animals that eat both plants and animals
The Florida Wild boar is an omnivore. It preys on reptiles (including rattlesnakes), amphibians, birds and their eggs, insects, worms, and any smaller mammal, dead or alive. Favored vegetation includes acorns, any fruits, seeds or nuts, mushrooms, roots,
and bark.

10. Summarizing
Draw and label a food chain with no more than five links. Draw arrows to show the flow of energy through the system. Use these words in your label
Sun
Energy
Producer
Consumer

11. Where does the producer in an ecosystem get its energy?
Guided Instruction:
Talk to your shoulder partner about the answer to each question. Check your work.
Where does the producer in an ecosystem get its energy?
sun 
water
animals 
plants

12. A Energy Energy Energy Energy Energy Energy The answer is
Producers capture the energy in sunlight to make their own food. Plants are producers.
Energy
Energy
Energy
Energy
Energy
Energy

13. What kind of organism eats both meat and plants?
Carnivore
Herbivore
Omnivore
producer

14. C
The answer is
Omnivores, like chickens and chimpanzees, eat both plants and animals. Grizzly bears feed on salmon but also on fruits and nuts. Even humans are omnivores!
If a student brings up the fact that some humans don’t eat meat, that is a choice called vegetarianism.

15. What is flowing from one part of a food chain to another?
energy
water
heat

16. B
The answer is
A food chain shows the FLOW OF ENERGY as it passes from one organism to another. Producers capture and store the energy from the sun. The food chain shows the path of the energy as each organism is eaten by another.
Remind students that the arrow points in the direction that the energy flows.

17. Summarizing Talking Chips:
In a group of 4, each member answer one of these questions
What is the main source of energy on Earth?
What do we call an organism that captures and stores energy?
In a food chain, what does the arrow indicate?
What would the FIRST consumer in a food chain be called?
The sun
Producer
The flow of Energy
Primary Consumer

18. Check Your Understanding
Number your paper from 1-3, select the answers that you think are correct
1. Carnivores are animals that eat other animals, and herbivores are animals that only eat plants. Which of the following shows a way that energy from the Sun can flow through an ecosystem that has both carnivores and herbivores?
 Carnivores Sun herbivores plants
 Sun carnivores plants herbivores
 Plants carnivores Sun herbivores
 Sun plants herbivores carnivores
A food chain must begin with the Sun
A plant must is the only organism that can capture the sun’s energy
Herbivores and animals that only eat plants
Carnivores are animals that only eat meat

19. Check Your Understanding
2. Which of the following shows one path in which energy flows through an environment?
An animal chain
A food chain
A food pyramid
A food web
A food chain shows one path (a food web shows multiple paths)

20. Check Your Understanding
3. A bird called a snail kite gets its energy from eating the apple snail. What would happen to the snail kite if the apple snail died?
There would be more snail kites.
The snail kites would eventually die.
The snail kite would get extra energy from the food chain.
The snail kite would be eaten by predators.
The snail kite would eventually die if his food source was eliminated

21. Check Your Understanding
4. What is one way that all animals depend on plants?
for energy
for shelter
for water
for sunlight
Plants can be used by SOME animals for all 4 of these choices. However ALL animals, not just some, depend on plants for energy.

22. Check your Answers d b a

23. Summarizing
Assign a role to each member of your collaborative group. Make a food chain and be ready to explain your role to others.
Essential Question:
What is the relationship between
the sun, producers, and consumers?
Students could make signs for themselves such as:
Sun-eucalyptus tree-kaola
Sun-grass-grasshopper-mouse-owl
(The number of links depends on the number of students, must always begin with the sun and then a producer)