Lesson/Activity Title: DINOSAUR FOOD WEB

Time: 1-2 class periods

Instructional Goals: • The student will use the PebbleGo Dinosaurs database to research three dinosaurs and their diets. • The student will be introduced to the concept of food webs. • The student will analyze information to complete a dinosaur food web.

Materials/Resources: • PebbleGo Dinosaurs online database • Dinosaur Food Web handout for each student or pair of students

Procedures/Lesson Activities: Focus 1. Write the words “Food Web” for students to see. Ask students to explain what the word “food” means. Tell them food is what living things eat to give them energy in order to live. (Note: PebbleGo Science has an article titled Food Chains and Webs that may be helpful with this portion of the lesson.) 2. Make a list of some of the foods students like to eat, such as salad, hamburgers, and chicken nuggets. Point out to students that some foods we eat are made of animals and some are made from plants. 3. Ask students what the word “web” means. Explain that a web is a drawing of how groups of things are related.

Teach/Model 4. Explain that a food web is a drawing that shows how energy moves from the sun through living things when they eat food. Tell students that the sun helps plants make their food (or energy). When animals eat plants, animals get energy from the plant. When people eat animals, they get energy from the animals. 5. Draw an example food web for students, such as the one shown below. Explain that the arrows point to the organism that is receiving the energy. the sun salad (lettuce) a person 6. Draw another example for students that is more complicated, such as the one below. Leave out the arrows and ask students to help you decide which way the arrows should point to show how the energy is moving through the web. the sun plant seeds chicken a person

www.pebblego.com © Capstone. All rights reserved. Guided Practice 7. Explain that food webs have been around ever since there were living things. Explain that even dinosaurs had food webs. Tell students they are going to research three dinosaurs to determine their place in a food web. 8. Tell students the three dinosaurs they will need to put on the food web are Triceratops, Troodon, and Tyrannosaurus rex. Ask students what they would need to know about each dinosaur to put it on a food web. (They would need to know what the dinosaur eats.) 9. Demonstrate for students how to access the PebbleGo Dinosaurs database. 10. Show students how to search for individual dinosaurs using the search box at the top of the screen. Demonstrate navigating through the articles, using the read aloud feature. Point out the “Food” tab for each article. 11. Give each student or pair of students a copy of the Dinosaur Food Web handout. Go through the directions on the page. Ask students what the arrows mean in the food web. (They show which way the energy goes when something is eaten.) Tell students they will need to cut out the three dinosaurs at the bottom of the page and glue them into the correct boxes on the food web. They will need to research what each dinosaur eats in order to make sure they place it in the correct box on the web.

Independent Practice 12. Allow time for each group to use the PebbleGo Dinosaurs database and complete the Dinosaur Food Web. Monitor student progress as they work to analyze the food web and place the dinosaurs in the correct places.

Closure 13. Review student answers to the Dinosaur Food Web. Ask students to explain why they chose to place each dinosaur in that spot. Review what the arrows mean in the food web.

Extend/Enrich • Have students create food webs based on what they eat for lunch. • Introduce additional vocabulary related to food webs, such as “producers” and “consumers.” Have students sort the living things on their Dinosaur Food Web into producers and consumers.

www.pebblego.com © Capstone. All rights reserved.

sun

rex

. Complete the food web web . the Complete food plants Tyrannosaurus Tyrannosaurus rex

insects & lizards &

, and Tyrannosaurus , Tyrannosaurus and Troodon Troodon Dinosaur Food Web Food Dinosaur

to research Triceratops, Triceratops, to research Triceratops PebbleGo Dinosaurs PebbleGo Use boxes. the correct into pictures the dinosaurs’ and pasting cutting by

Name:______

• Permission is granted to reproduce for classroom use. classroom for reproduce to granted is Permission • PebbleGo www.pebblego.com • 2015 company, Publishers Capstone a Press, ©Capstone Capstone.© All rights reserved.