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Science at key stage 3    (Year 8)

Unit 8D: Ecological relationships
Section 13: How do living things in a community depend on each other? (1)

QCA

Objectives
Children should learn:
  • that all feeding relationships within a habitat are interconnected
  • that food webs are made up of a number of food chains
  • to make predictions about the effect of different environmental factors on plant and animal populations
  • to use ICT to model population changes
  • that plants benefit from waste products and the decay of other organisms

Activities

Outcomes
Children:
  • Review pupils' understanding about feeding relationships by providing them with examples of food webs to analyse. Ensure that they can identify the food chains within a food web, and that they understand the terms 'producer' and 'consumer' and the flow of materials through the food chain.
  • Challenge pupils to predict the effects of making changes to the numbers of one type of organism. Encourage pupils to go beyond simple relationships by considering knock-on effects of a single change, eg as the number of rabbits decreases, more grass will grow, providing more food for other grass-eating animals, whose numbers may increase as a result.
  • Ask pupils to consider a range of examples of such changes in communities and their consequences. Extend the work by asking pupils to use a computer program to model changes, eg the effect of changing initial population sizes of predators and prey. Ask pupils to look for patterns in graphs produced from the data, to use these to make predictions about what will happen next and to test their predictions by allowing the simulation to run on.
  • Challenge pupils to explain how plants benefit from the other organisms in the community.
  • identify the food chains which make up a food web
  • use the terms 'producer', 'consumer' and other terms related to feeding
  • describe how a food web shows the feeding relationships within an environment
  • predict how changing the size of one population will affect the numbers of other species
  • present data from simulations as graphs and make predictions from patterns in these
  • describe ways in which plants depend on other organisms

Points to note
  • Pupils will have constructed food webs in unit 7C 'Environment and feeding relationships'.
  • Data from the fieldwork could be drawn on for the rest of this unit. It will need to be supplemented by secondary data.
  • A visit from an ecologist or environmental scientist to tell pupils about how he/she gathers evidence would enhance this unit. Pupils could be asked to use their own experience to prepare questions.
  • Changes in populations of micro-organisms over a relatively short time period can provide helpful illustrations of the relationship between populations and resources.

Sections in this unit

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This unit is divided into sections. Each section contains a sequence of activities with related objectives and outcomes. You can view this unit by moving through the sections or print/download the whole unit.
1. How can animals be classified? (1)
2. How can animals be classified? (2)
3. How can green plants be classified?
4. How do plants, animals and environmental conditions interact in a habitat? a) How can we collect data to answer questions about a habitat? (1)
5. How do plants, animals and environmental conditions interact in a habitat? a) How can we collect data to answer questions about a habitat? (2)
6. How do plants, animals and environmental conditions interact in a habitat? b) What lives there? (1)
7. How do plants, animals and environmental conditions interact in a habitat? b) What lives there? (2)
8. How do plants, animals and environmental conditions interact in a habitat? c) Why do the communities differ in different habitats? (1)
9. How do plants, animals and environmental conditions interact in a habitat? c) Why do the communities differ in different habitats (2)
10. How do plants, animals and environmental conditions interact in a habitat? c) Why do the communities differ in different habitats? (3)
11. How do plants, animals and environmental conditions interact in a habitat? d) How big are the populations in the habitat? (1)
12. How do plants, animals and environmental conditions interact in a habitat? d) How big are the populations in the habitat? (2)
13. How do living things in a community depend on each other? (1)
14. How do living things in a community depend on each other? (2)
15. Reviewing work