Food Pyramids

This is the FIRST post about my 7th grade science class.

7th grade is taught life sciences

8th grade is taught physical sciences

I can't decide which one I like better.  I originally wanted to be a high school biology teacher and started college majoring in Biology Education.   So I really like 7th grade.  But for some reason it's so much easier to come up with experiments for physical sciences.   

Right now in 7th grade we're in our ecology unit.  We went over the water cycle, the carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle, abiotic vs. biotic, biomes, and food webs, including producers, consumers, and decomposers.  Tomorrow we will talk about food pyramids.

The Main Objectives:

Matter cycles through a system.

Energy flows through the system.

Energy is lost at each stage.

We'll start by reviewing a few of the cycles we've talked about, emphasizing that that water atom, or that nutrient, can end up exactly where it started.  Then we'll transition by looking at the food web worksheet we did last class, choosing one path (or one food chain).  We'll talk about where the energy first comes from (the sun), and how it goes from the sun, through the grass, through the animal that eats the grass all the way to the top animal.  Energy is flowing because it cannot go back to the sun.

Something like that.  

Do keep in mind that my school has four classes a day at 90 minutes each. These are long classes.

Anyway, here's my food energy pyramid template.  Feel free to download and use at the bottom of this page. :)

UPDATE: Here's how class went:

My whiteboard including a guideline for one of the triangles and the rubric.

My smart board.  To save time I had examples of food chains in different biomes.  They had to choose two to draw on their pyramid.  They were allowed to switch animals around as long as the chain was still found in nature.

My example pyramid.  One side had to be labeled like this.

The unfortunate friend of one of my students is going to be eaten by a lion!

I love these drawings.

The students really did a good job on this project.  I had a lot of good effort. 

Final product. 

My final thoughts:  This was a really good activity.  The kids were engaged, and even the kids who don't like coloring were into it.  I think the fact that it would be 3-dimensional in the end really bumped up the coolness factor for some of them.  There was only one student who was not motivated, but he was having an off day. All in all, good lesson.