1. 6th Grade Science Unit 3: Interdependence

2. In your own words, what is a food chain?
Bellringer
In your own words, what is a food chain?
July 22, 2012
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3. Unit Vocabulary Producer Biome Population
Photosynthesis Biotic Factor Individual
Consumer Abiotic Factor Tertiary
Herbivore Terrestrial Biome Primary
Carinvore Aquatic Biome Secondary
Omnivore Permafrost
Scavenger Community
Food chain Ecosystem
Food web Biosphere
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4. Unit Essential Question
How do living things interact with one another and with the non-living elements of their environment?
Lesson essential question: How do consumers get energy? Compare and contrast consumers, producers, and decomposers.
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5. Food Chains and Food Webs
All living things need energy to carry out basic functions.
Organisms get their energy by breaking down food.
Green plants use the sun’s energy to make their own food. (What is this process called?)
Animals must eat other organisms to obtain energy.
Energy flows among organisms in pathways called food chains and food webs.

6. Producers
Producers are organisms that make their own food. Examples: green plants, algae, certain bacteria.
Land producers: grasses, shrubs, trees
Aquatic producers: algae
Green plants capture the energy in sunlight. They use sunlight to make a sugar called glucose. Glucose, like all foods, contains stored chemical energy.
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7. Consumers
Consumers are organisms that eat plants or other organisms to obtain energy.
All animals and many bacteria are consumers.
Animals do not make their own food like plants, so they must eat plants or other animals.
Consumers that mainly eat plants for energy are called herbivores. Mice, rabbits, and caterpillars are examples.
Consumers that eat other animals are called carnivores. Wolves, snakes, hawks, and spiders are examples.
Consumers that get energy by eating both plants and animals are called omnivores.
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8. Types of Consumers
Primary (herbivores): they eat producers. For example, a rabbit eats grass.
Secondary (omnivores and carnivores): they eat primary consumers. For example, a snake eats a rabbit.
Tertiary consumers: they eat secondary consumers. For example, a hawk eats a snake.
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9. Energy Pyramid
Why is the energy low and population small for tertiary consumers?
Why is the opposite true for producers?
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10. Transfer of Energy
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11. Decomposers
What happens to leaves that drop from the trees in the fall?
What happens to animals that die in the forest?
Believe it or not, dead plants and animals are very helpful to an ecosystem. They have energy and nutrients stored in their tissues.
Decomposers are organisms that beak down and feed on dead organisms and waste to obtain energy.
Many decomposers are tiny bacteria. Some types of mushrooms are also decomposers. Earthworms often act as decomposers as well.
The materials decomposers break down are important to all living things. Those materials remain in the soil or are carried into bodies of water. They contain nutrients used by producers that live on land or in the water.
Decomposers help keep the food chain going.
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12. Scavengers
Scavengers are animals that look for and eat animals that are already dead.
Crow
Hyena
Vulture
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13. Food Chains
Life on Earth depends on energy from the sun. Plants capture the energy of sunlight during photosynthesis. They store this energy as chemical energy. The energy is passed on to consumers that feed on plants. So producers are the first step in any energy pathway.
A food chain is a way to show the path of energy flowing from one organism to another. The arrows mean “gets energy from” or “is eaten by.”
In this example, the flower uses energy
from the sun to make glucose. The
energy transfers to the caterpillar when
it eats the flower. When the frog eats
the caterpillar, the frog gets the energy
stored in the body of the caterpillar.
Then the energy is passed on to the
snake when it eats the frog. When the
owl eats the snake, it receives the
energy. Does anyone know what would
be next in the chain? Specifically, if
the owl were to die?
July 22, 2012
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14. Food Chains Continued
A food chain does not show all the ways organisms in an environment interact to get energy.
A food chain describes one path that energy can take
Most organisms don’t just eat one type of food.
Does anyone know what type of diagram shows how all the food chains connect together?
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15. Food Chain Interactive Games
Food Chain Game
Chain Reaction
July 22, 2012
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16. Food Webs
A food web is a diagram of several food chains connected together.
The arrows in a food web work the same way those in a food chain do.
Look at the food web to find the paths of energy.
How many food chains can you find within the food web?
Follow the arrows to see how energy moves through the different organisms in the environment.
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17. Abiotic and Biotic Factors
A biome is characterized (or labeled) by both the living and nonliving parts that make up the area.
Abiotic factors are all the nonliving parts of a biome, such as precipitation (snow, rain, sleet, hail), temperature, altitude, sunlight, air, water, and nonliving parts of soil. The amounts and conditions of abiotic factors are what give biomes their individual characteristics.
Biotic factors include all the living parts of the biome, such as plants and animals. The organisms in biomes depend on one another for survival.
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18. Make a T-Chart!
List the abiotic and biotic factors in the picture of the ecosystem.
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