Lesson 1: Flow of Energy
Duration of Days: 3
Lesson Objective
Trace the flow of energy from primary producers (phytoplankton) to apex predators in marine and freshwater food webs.
How does energy enter, move through, and leave an ecosystem?
How is energy transferred from one organism to another, and what are the roles of producers, consumers, and decomposers?
HS-LS2-4 (Energy flow in ecosystems).
Synthesizing information from multiple sources (diagrams + text).
Students build a food web of a chosen ecosystem and simulate the removal of one species to observe a top-down cascade where other organism will be affect and show how the overall ecosystem will be affected.
(DOK 3)
See "Materials / Resources / Text / Speakers" field
Students are given 10 organism cards and must draw the arrows (energy flow) and label each as a Producer, Primary Consumer, etc. They must then write Cascade Prediction for the removal of the apex predator.