Online Lesson Modules

LessonFarm.Com
Home | Search/Browse Lessons | Questions?

Welcome Guest
Login | Register

A Lesson on Breaking the Food Chain	Export Lesson as PDF \| Save As Favorite

	Grade: Grade 4 Subject: English Language Arts Created by: Stephanie Shuerger Lesson Length: 2 hours Keywords/Tags: food chain, food web, disruption, cause and effect, science, fourth grade Lesson Description: This lesson is modeled for a fourth grade class on the aspects and detail of the food chain. The lesson will not only provide the student with ample research material, but have the student actively thinking about the cause and effect process as well as integrate tier 3 words.
Common Core Standards Covered with This Lesson CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.4.1: Refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.4.1: Refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the text says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.4.1: Write opinion pieces on topics or texts, supporting a point of view with reasons and information. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.4.9b : Apply grade 4 Reading standards to informational texts (e.g., “Explain how an author uses reasons and evidence to support particular points in a text”). CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.4.4: Determine or clarify the meaning of unknown and multiple-meaning words and phrases based on grade 4 reading and content, choosing flexibly from a range of strategies. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.4.6: Acquire and use accurately grade-appropriate general academic and domain-specific words and phrases, including those that signal precise actions, emotions, or states of being (e.g., quizzed, whined, stammered) and that are basic to a particular topic (e.g., wildlife, conservation, and endangered when discussing animal preservation).

Lesson Content: Reading
Instructions: Please read the following reading passage as many times as needed (aloud and silent) before starting to go through other lesson pages. Understanding the content of this passage is very important since the lesson activities will be all about this content. Feel free to print the passage if needed.

Breaking the Food Chain

A food chain is a link between plants and animals. It starts with a plant. The next part of the link is a plant eater. When the prairie plants were uprooted, the animals that depended on them lost their food source. So while the farmers produced more food for people, they broke the animals’ food chain. For example, if a bird needs seeds to eat and the plant is gone, that bird will not be able to survive. And the animals that ate that bird won’t have any food, either.

A food chain is part of a bigger system called a food web. That web links the living things in an environment. The herbivores in that system depend on the plants. If the plants are removed, the herbivores cannot survive. Herbivores in Chicago include rabbits, squirrels, and many insects. Long ago, they used to include bison and deer. Today you will find some deer in some parts of this area, but you won’t find them in the city.

When herbivores lose their food, they die out. Then the carnivores, the animals that eat other animals, lose their food, too. Wolves used to depend on the deer for their food. Without deer, the wolves lost their food. Foxes died out, too. They had hunted birds, even catching ducks when they were on the side of ponds.

Remove just one kind of plant from an environment and you disrupt a food chain. Plow up the land and you destroy the whole system.

What happened in Chicago? People moved in. They built homes. They built streets. They took away land from nature. Look at this timeline and you’ll see how more and more people moved here. We don’t have the numbers for the bison or deer. But we know that today there are no bison in Chicago, you will only find them at the zoo.

1880 The population of the city is 503,185; farms continue to expand

1890 The population of the city is 1,099,850

1900 The population is 1,698,676

1910 Factories expand in the city; population is 2,185,283

1920 The city’s population has grown to 2,701,705

1930 The city’s population is 3,376,438

Task 2: Discussion Activity (30 points)
Instructions: This discussion forum will have questions for students to respond. Read the posted questions, and respond to each. Students are responsible for posting one initial and and two peer responses for each topic.


	Topic Title	Replies

	Why is the food chain important? Why is the food chain so imporant? Why does the author stress how bad the disruption of a food chain would be? Sent on: Oct 12, 2013 by: Stephanie Shuerger	0

	What would happen if the food chain switched? What would happen if the roles in the food chain switched? What if carnivores became herbivores and herbivores became carnivores? Would that change anything, or would the role reversal equal out? Sent on: Oct 12, 2013 by: Stephanie Shuerger	0

	How do rural and urban areas compare? The author makes an example of Chicago. Do you think the food chain is the same in all places, or that it can change between rural and urban areas? Sent on: Oct 12, 2013 by: Stephanie Shuerger	0

Standards Covered with This Lesson Activity: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.4.1, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.4.1,

Task 3: Writing Activity (30 points)
Instructions: If a link of the food chain was removed, what do you think would happen to the rest of the food chain? Would it affect the levels below it? Would it affect the levels above it? What kind of effect would removing the link from the food chain would have on the land? Please be specific and provide a detailed reponse to all questions. (250 word minimum)

Standards Covered with This Lesson Activity: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.4.1, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.4.9b ,

University of South Florida Patent & Copyright Office © 2017 (Tech ID # Pending)