GRADES 3-5; 6-8; 9-12
GAME UP
The Food Chain Game
Food Fight
OBJECTIVES
Students will:
- Illustrate and describe the content vocabulary in Word Maps.
- Match flashcards of words and prepositions, and use them in sentences with gerunds.
- Answer questions about the movie in a Think-Pair-Share activity.
VOCABULARY
General Vocabulary
| depend (v)
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frog (n)
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row (v)
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| plant (n)
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insect (n)
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| pond (n)
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snail (n)
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Content Vocabulary
| chain (n)
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ecosystem (n)
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produce (v)
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| web (n)
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population (n)
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consume (v)
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system (n)
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energy (n)
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PREPARATION
- Gather visuals to help reinforce the vocabulary words.
- Prepare cards to play the Prepositions + Gerunds game with the class.
- Write the Movie Comprehension Questions on the board or prepare handouts.
- Make copies of the Food Chain Image or project it to the class.
LESSON PROCEDURE
Vocabulary
- Watch the Vocabulary movie to introduce the new words, stopping to ask questions, give examples, and ask students to make connections to the words.
- For homework, have students choose at least one of the Content Vocabulary words to illustrate in a Word Map. The following day, group the students together by the word they defined. Have each group share and compare their Word Maps, and then present a summary to the rest of the class.
- Project the picture side of Flash Words onto the board or interactive white board. Students label the words they know and then flip the pictures to check if they are correct.
Grammar
- Watch the Grammar movie.
- Prepositions are tricky for English Language Learners. To practice pairing prepositions and gerunds, prepare a set of cards to play a game. You will stick the cards onto the board with tape. Students can sit in small groups for their teams, or each team can be a row in the classroom. Put up a preposition card. The teams take turns putting up a word that goes with the preposition. They must also come up with a correct sentence using a gerund. Examples of the cards are below. Note that some of the words are verbs and some are adjectives. Make a separate card for each word.
| Thank you
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Ask
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Think
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| Use
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for
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Complain
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Suspect
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of
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| Known
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Dream
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Scared
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| Stop
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Forget
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about
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Tired
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| Protect
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from
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Talk
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Believe
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in
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| Prevent
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Think
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Interested
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| Keep
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Worried
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Bored
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| Plan
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Happy
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Angry
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with
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| Spend time
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on
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Good
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at
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Annoyed
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| Spend money
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Bad
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| Depend
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- To practice using expressions with go + gerunds, have a competition among small groups of students. Each group lists as many expressions as they can think of, such as go swimming, go camping, etc. It could also be done as a Roundtable activity in their groups. The group with the most correct expressions wins. Then ask the groups to create sentences with the expressions, reminding them to use “go” in all the tenses they have learned.
Movie
- Tell the students that in the movie Let’s Go Rowing (L3U4L2), Moby and Ben go fishing and Moby wants to keep a fish for a pet. Discuss this idea and ask why it’s probably not a good idea. Ask the question again after the movie.
- Pause the movie at prepositions and expressions followed by gerunds for students to repeat the phrases.
- Project the Food Chain Image on the interactive white board. Alternatively, print a copy for each pair of students and have them cut up the six images. Students must describe the food chain as they sequence the images. For homework, students can research a different food chain.
- Write the following questions on the board or prepare handouts. Pause the movie at the appropriate points for partners to discuss the answers in a Think-Pair-Share, and then share answers with the class.
- Why does Ben thank Moby?
- Why does Ben say that Moby can forget about keeping the fish?
- What do you think a system is? Give an example.
- What happens in an ecosystem?
- Name three things that depend on other things in the ecosystem of a pond.
- Describe the same thing about a different ecosystem.
- Why do we need energy?
- Describe a food chain. What is the beginning of a food chain? Why is it called a chain?
- Give an example of a producer and a consumer.
- Describe something that can happen if there is a change in the food chain.
Features
- Watch Hear It, Say It. Students may listen and repeat sentences from the movie.
- Students do the remaining interactive features of the lesson: Play It, Warm Up, and You Can Do It.
ACTIVITIES
- Watch the BrainPOP Jr. movie Food Chain. Sequence parts of a food chain in the Game and do the Venn Diagram activity in Talk About It.
- Play the following related games on Game Up: The Food Chain Game and Food Fight.
- For homework, have students find or draw 2-3 pictures each of producers, consumers, and decomposers (if they have also learned it). The next day, put all of the pictures in one pile and play a sorting game.
- Use Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax to teach about food chains. Many things happened because the Once-ler cut down the Truffala Trees to make Thneeds. Plants and animals were affected:
• The Truffala Trees were cut down.
• The Brown Bar-ba-loots didn’t have any more Truffala Fruit to eat, so they had to leave.
• The Somee-Swans couldn’t sing because of the smog, so they had to leave.
• The Humming-Fish couldn’t swim in their pond because of the pollution, so they had to leave.
• The Lorax left because there was nothing there anymore.
Some differentiated options for projects about The Lorax are:
• Draw a picture of one of the things that happened.
• Draw a web illustrating the different consequences of cutting down the trees.
• Illustrate the sequence of consequences.
• Think of a habitat or ecosystem, or make one up. Write and illustrate a book about how the plants and animals are affected by a change in the food chain.
- Expand on the concept of pond ecosystems with the children’s book Pond Circle by Betsy Franco.
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