Introduction
Have you ever thought of what would happen if an organisms food source disappeared? Well a food chain shows us the importance of every individual organism and how they are connected. In this WebQuest you will explore how energy moves through an ecosystem. You will be able to identify key roles such as producers, consumers and decomposers. Through Florida state science standards you will build skills in teamwork, research and critical thinking in order to learn how the balance of nature is important. So, welcome to your adventure into food chains!
Task
Your job for this quest is to find a team of 3 or 4 and make a narrated slideshow presentation about a particular food chain that interests you from an ecosystem of your choice. For example: ocean, rainforest, desert and etc. Within your group of explorers you will research, create and present your presentation (google slides, canva, power point, etc.) that explains how the food chain you picked works and why it is important that these organisms depend on one another.
Process
In order to successfully complete this project do as follows:
1. Form your team!
This team will be made up of 3 to 4 students that should all be putting in equal effort but if it makes things easier feel free to assign roles such as a researcher, designer and editor.
2. Pick your ecosystem!
A specific ecosystem needs to be chosen to base your groups food chain on. It could be from the ocean, desert, forest or more!
3.Properly research!
You should have at least 4 or more organisms in your food chain. After choosing that figure out what they eat and what eats them. Correctly fit them into the categories of producers, primary consumers, secondary consumers and decomposers.
4. Form your food chain!
Make a simple visual with images that labels everything and uses arrows to show how energy moves from one organism to the next one.
5. Create your slideshow!
Find any website that has slideshows (preferably google slides or power point)
SLIDE 1- Title slide that introduces your group
SLIDE 2- Simple introduction to your ecosystem
SLIDE 3- Explain how this ecosystem affects your food chain
SLIDE 4- Show and explain your food chain in a diagram
SLIDE 5- Display a fun and interactive question for your audience involving one of the species from the diagram
SLIDE 6- Conclusion slide that emphasizes the importance of food chains in nature
SLIDE 7- “Thank you!” slide along with the sources you used during your research
6. Practice presenting!
Determine who will present what slide
7. Save your slideshow!
Save the slideshow as a PDF on a flash drive to bring to class
Evaluation
| Criteria | 4- Excellent | 3-Good | 2- Work needed | 1- Incomplete |
| Accuracy | All information is correct and explained as so | One minor mistake but still mostly accurate | A handful of big mistakes | Almost all information is incorrect |
| Design | Slides are easy to visually understand and is organized | Effort noticed but weak design | Visuals are simple but not neat | All visuals are a mess |
| Teamwork | All team members equally contributed | Two people did most of the work | Only one did most of the work | No teamwork shown at all |
| Presentation | Voices were loud clear and engaged with the audience | Voices were clear but hard to hear a few times | No confidence and hard to understand | Could not understand or did not show up |
Conclusion
Congrats you have come to the end of this WebQuest! Now that you have demonstrated the importance of food chains in an ecosystem you can understand how all organisms are connected and depend on one another to stay alive. And also how in nature this balance is important starting from plants to predators and even to decomposers.
Enrichment activity to test your knowledge you learned on how food chains work:
https://www.sheppardsoftware.com/science/animals/games/food-chain/
Lastly, take time to reflect on how you as a human may affect food chains!