Virginia SOL 4.3.b

Science4th GradeLiving Systems and Processes

The Standard

food webs show the flow of energy within an ecosystem

Virginia Standards of Learning for Science

Teacher's field guide

What Students Need to Do: Students identify producers and consumers in a set of organisms. They connect feeding relationships and trace how energy passes along several paths.
What Mastery Looks Like: Given organism cards or descriptions, students can build an accurate food web with arrows pointing from food source to eater. They can explain how a change in one population may affect others.
Common Misconceptions: Students often reverse arrows because they think arrows show which animal does the eating. They may draw one straight food chain instead of several connected paths. Some assume every animal eats every organism below it.
How to Assess It: Give students the Sun, grass, grasshopper, rabbit, frog, and hawk. Ask them to draw a food web, add arrows, and explain what one arrow means.

Lesson moves

Give groups organism cards and yarn, then have them connect food sources to eaters and label each arrow with “energy moves.”
Ask, “What might happen to hawks if the rabbit population drops?” and have students support predictions with two links from a food web.
Play a food web relay where teams place arrow cards correctly between pictured organisms, earning a point for each accurate explanation.
Study a local pond organism list, then draw how algae, insects, fish, frogs, and herons are connected through feeding.

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A ready-to-print activity worksheet aligned to 4.3.b, with an answer key for the teacher on its own page. No account needed.

PDF, US Letter, prints cleanly in black and white.

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