Mississippi Science FB.6.5
The Standard
- FB.6
- Students will understand the interdependence of living organisms and their environment.
Use models to analyze the flow of energy through food chains, webs, and pyramids.
2026 Mississippi College- and Career-Readiness Standards for Science · Ecological Principals
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students use food chains, webs, and pyramids to trace energy from sunlight through living things. They explain why less energy is available at each step.
What Mastery Looks Like
- A student draws arrows from food to eater in a food web. They use an energy pyramid to explain why a habitat can support fewer hawks than mice.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may point arrows toward what gets eaten instead of toward the eater. They may think energy cycles back to plants or stays equal at every step.
How to Assess It
- On an exit ticket, ask students to draw arrows for grass, mouse, and owl. Then ask: If grass has 100 energy units, about how many reach the mouse and the owl?
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give groups grass, rabbit, and fox cards plus 100 counters; have them pass 10 counters to the rabbit and 1 to the fox.
Ask: If rabbits disappear from a grass-rabbit-fox chain, what happens to the foxes' energy source? Explain using an arrow.
Give pairs grass, grasshopper, frog, snake, and hawk cards; race to arrange them and draw arrows toward each eater.
Show photos of garden kale, caterpillars, and robins; have students trace a robin's food energy back to sunlight.
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Printable FB.6.5 Worksheet
A ready-to-print activity worksheet aligned to FB.6.5, with an answer key for the teacher on its own page. No account needed.
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Related Standards
- BIO.5.4
Develop and use models to describe the flow of energy and amount of biomass through food chains, food webs, and food pyramids.
- L.5.3B.2
Develop and use a food chain model to classify organisms as producers, consumers, or decomposers. Trace the energy flow to explain how each group of organisms o...
- L.6.3.5
Develop and use food chains, webs, and pyramids to analyze how energy is transferred through an ecosystem from producers (autotrophs) to consumers (heterotrophs...
- ENV.1.3
Use models to explain why the flow of energy through an ecosystem can be illustrated by a pyramid with less energy available at the higher trophic levels compar...
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