Food Chains & Energy Transfer
Construct and interpret food chains identifying producers, predators, and prey, and understand energy transfer between trophic levels
Typical age: 8–9 years
“Can your child build a food chain for a woodland and point out which organisms are producers, which are predators, and which are prey?”
0 / 3 mastered
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Needs first
- Rainforest Food Webs
Rainforest food webs enrich curriculum food chains topic (exploratory age 7 -> curriculum age 8)
- Animal Nutrition
Nutrition knowledge supports understanding why animals occupy different trophic levels
- Simple Food ChainsREQUIRED
Must understand simple food chains before constructing complex ones with producer/predator/prey terminology
- Ecology VocabularyREQUIRED
Constructing and interpreting food chains requires producer, consumer, predator, prey vocabulary
- Ocean Food Webs
Ocean food webs build on curriculum food chains with trophic levels
Unlocks next
- Matter Cycling in EcosystemsREQUIRED
Must understand food chains with producers/predators before modelling matter cycling through ecosystem
- Insects in ecosystems
Curriculum food-chains knowledge (producers/predators/prey) provides foundation for understanding full insect ecosystem roles
- Food Webs & InterdependenceREQUIRED
KS3 food webs and ecosystem interdependence extends KS2 introduction to food chains with producers, predators and prey