Virginia SOL LS.5.c
The Standard
relationships exist among producers, consumers, and decomposers.
Virginia Standards of Learning for Science · The student will investigate and understand that biotic and abiotic factors affect an ecosystem. Key ideas include
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students trace energy and matter through a food chain or food web. They explain how organisms get food and how decomposers return nutrients to the environment.
What Mastery Looks Like
- Students correctly classify organisms from evidence about how they obtain energy. They can predict how changing one population affects other organisms in the food web.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may think plants get their food from soil rather than making sugars through photosynthesis. They may think energy is recycled or that decomposers only eat dead animals. Some reverse food web arrows.
How to Assess It
- Exit ticket: Draw and label the feeding relationships among grass, rabbit, hawk, and fungi. Explain what the fungi contribute to the ecosystem.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Give groups organism cards and yarn, then have them build a food web and label each organism's role.
Ask students to write what would happen to three populations if decomposers disappeared from a forest.
Play a sorting relay where teams place organism cards under producer, consumer, or decomposer and defend one difficult choice.
Examine a compost bin diagram and identify what decomposers use, what they release, and how nearby plants benefit.
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Printable LS.5.c Worksheet
A ready-to-print activity worksheet aligned to LS.5.c, with an answer key for the teacher on its own page. No account needed.
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Related Standards
- LS.6.a
relationships exist between predators and prey and these relationships are modeled in food webs;
- 3.5.b
relationships exist among organisms in an ecosystem.
- 4.3.a
interrelationships exist in populations, communities, and ecosystems;
- 2.5.a
plants and animals are interdependent with their living and nonliving surroundings;
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