In Science, year 4 have been learning about food chains as part of their topic on living things. In order to know what is eaten by what within a habitat, the children firstly had to revisit what they knew about the organisms that share the same habitats. They matched pictures of plants and animals with images of different types of habitats. They discussed why those organisms were suited to their habitat and what they though the animals ate. Thinking about each habitat and what might be eaten by what, the children then had to choose the correct organisms and place them into a food chain. A food chain always starts with a plant, which is called a producer, because they make their own food using light energy from the sun. The first animal, which is called the primary consumer, is either a herbivore or omnivore. The children then added a secondary and sometimes a tertiary consumer, which are either omnivores or carnivores. They particularly enjoyed creating their own food chains, drawing them in their books and labelling them with the scientific vocabulary they had learnt. It was also vital that the arrows pointed in the right direction to represent the flow of food energy from one organism to another. Some of the diagrams the children drew were absolutely fantastic! As a challenge to apply what they had learnt, the children had to think about what might happen if one of the organisms disappeared from a food chain. They described the impact that this would have on the other organisms and even on other food chains within that habitat. We had some fascinating discussions about the factors that might cause organisms to disappear from a food chain, such as pollution, habitat destruction and climate change.
