Ecology programme aimed at KS3
Suitable for KS3, March - November
Key concepts
Habitat, community, ecosystem, food chains and webs, feeding relationships, energy transfer, pyramids of numbers and biomass.
Learning outcomes
- use a range of vocabulary to describe woodland ecology.
- explain how plants and animals interact with their environment.
- explain how all feeding relationships within a habitat are interconnected.
- represent feeding relationships in an ecosystem as a pyramid of numbers.
- understand that energy is lost at each stage of a food chain through respiration, excretion, movement etc.
Activities
Ecology of an oak tree - based at an oak tree, introduce or explore the concepts of habitats, feeding relationships, energy flow, food chains and webs.
Collecting evidence - discuss and then observe / record key evidence for different producers, primary and secondary consumers.
Pyramid of numbers - using the evidence collected, build a pyramid of numbers that represents the class data.
Food webs - an interactive game that create a woodland food web and considers natural and man-made impacts on the web.
Energy flow game - a relay race that illustrates the transfer of energy and energy loss through a food chain
