Food chains

A few resources on food chains.

Websites

• Ecokids game
• KS2 – Information pages, quiz and a game from BBC Bitesize
• KS3 – Revision notes, online activity and test
• Science Revision notes and links on Food Chains from Woodlands Junior School
• Printable worksheets and quizzes from Enchanted Learning
• Quiz game from Zephyrus
• Read about and create your own food webs
• Useful summary of the basics including decomposition

Books:

• The Magic School Bus Gets Eaten: A Book About Food Chains
• Yum Yum (Wonderwise)
  It reads very well as a story, without any extra information disturbing the flow, making this great as a story book.
  Beautifully illustrated and not too simplistic in its view of food chains. It extends the concept to food circles/cycles and includes what happens when an animal dies, the fact that plants use nutrients from decomposed animals as food, and illustrates that there may be different consumers of that same plant (in this case).
• Staying Alive: the story of a food chain

Things to think about

Food chains give a simplistic and potentially misleading view, which is more accurately shown in a food web and food cycle/circle. The missing piece of the puzzle with much of the information is that plants require nutrients as do fungi and algae. These come from decomposted plants, animals and their waste materials. The emphasis on linear chains and the misleading idea that plants are the start of a process requiring nothing but water and sunlight, obscure the vital imporatance of recycling nutrients – the very foundation of a healthy ecosystem. Importance of parasites is often overlooked as well.

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