Lesson 2: Who's Eating Whom?
Materials and Preparation
- Timer
- Construction paper (4 colors) for tokens. Red (top predators), blue (secondary consumers), brown (primary consumers), and green (producers). Cut the appropriate colored construction paper into food tokens according to Table 1.
- One envelope per student.
- Feeding behavior cards for organisms. Reproduce the feeding behavior cards. Put one feeding behavior card and the appropriate number and color of food tokens into each envelope.
| Go to the downloads page for: Table 1, food tokens, and behavior cards. |
Procedure
Discussion
- Describe the Great Lakes freshwater marsh habitat in terms of plants and animals that live there. Have students discuss what they know about marshes. What lives there? Discuss the organisms. Find out how these marshes may be important to the students (e.g., for fishing, bird watching, or collecting frogs and turtles).
- Also discuss the importance of the freshwater marshes with emphasis on their high productivity as a place for plants and animals to live. Introduce the terms “predator” and “prey” as well as “producers” and “consumers.” With the students’ help, integrate their knowledge to come up with useable and understandable definitions of these terms.
- Explain to the students that they are going to participate in an activity in which they will become freshwater marsh plants and animals to see how food chains and food webs work. Explain that organisms (students) need to eat in order to survive and that some of them depend on the others for that reason. Some students will be predators and others will be prey. Some students will be both: thus, they will need to eat other organisms but also avoid being eaten. Discuss this for a minute. Can there be more then one predator? Can predators eat predators? Build on previous knowledge of food chains to help learners understand these ideas.
- For simplicity in this game, organisms are assigned specific prey that they are allowed to consume. In reality, size of an organism is a complicating factor. For example, young bass and pike (fish) may in fact be prey to an adult crayfish. Similarly, even a small raccoon that gets too close to the water could become food for a large pike. There are endless examples of how the age or size of an organism could alter the structure of a food web. However, the end result of a food web is the transfer of energy and mass from producers to the top consumers or predators.
Pre-game Preparation
- Discuss the object of the game: By acting out the feeding motions of freshwater organisms, students will “capture” (tag) the appropriate prey and try to collect enough food tokens to survive.
- Pass out one envelope (containing feeding behavior cards and tokens) to each student. Each envelope contains the identity of one animal that lives in a freshwater marsh. Explain that their identity is a secret—they are not to tell others. The only way others will know what they are is by the way they feed.
- Have the students open their envelopes and see what animal they are and what feeding behavior they use. Remind them not to tell what they are. Emphasize that they are people pretending to be animals, and humans will not be able to move exactly like animals. Review the organisms and their feeding behaviors but allow students to improvise.
Source
Adapted for the Great Lakes Education Program with permission from “Marsh Munchers,” Project WILD Aquatic. Modified by Brandon Schroeder, Michigan State University Fisheries and Wildlife Department.
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> Explain the Rules, Play the Game, and Discuss the Results
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