School › Food chains
Food chains and webs
Who eats whom? Producers, consumers and decomposers, how food chains link into food webs, why only about a tenth of the energy passes up each step, and how some pollutants build up towards the top. Three ages, each with a text, an experiment, a game, a quiz, a printable worksheet and a teacher sheet.
Ages 6–7Who eats whom?Plants make food, animals eat plants or other animals, and tiny living things clean up. Make a paper food chain and find out who eats whom.Ages 10–11Food chains, webs and energyFrom producers to apex predators: name the levels of a food chain, see how chains link into a food web, and find out why only about a tenth of the energy passes up each step.Ages 15–16Energy flow, pyramids and biomagnificationCalculate productivity and trophic transfer efficiency, compare pyramids of numbers, biomass and energy, and model how persistent pollutants become concentrated at the top of a food chain.