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5th grade · Science · Unit 11 of 12

Matter Moves in Ecosystems

Producers, consumers and decomposers, and how matter and energy move among them.

What your child practices

Your child models how matter and energy move between living things and the environment, through food chains and decomposers.

Alabama Course of Study content standard: 5.9 · how matter and energy move between organisms and their environment

How we explain it

Children can open this short lesson before they practice.

  1. Producers make food. Consumers eat. Decomposers break down dead things.
  2. Matter moves through a food web: grass a deer eats becomes part of the deer's body or its energy.
  3. Decomposers, like worms, return nutrients to the soil.
  4. If one food runs short, the animals that eat it have less food.

Example: Mice eat seeds and owls eat mice. If seeds decreased, what would happen to owls? Fewer seeds means fewer mice. Fewer mice means less food for owls. Answer: they would have less food

Matter Moves in Ecosystems in Alabama

In the Alabama Course of Study, this is unit 11 of 12 in 5th grade Science, after Earth's Systems & Water and before Gravity Pulls Down.

Gradelings describes a child's practice on this unit as Beginning, Approaching, Meeting or Exceeding (Four practice steps). That reflects practice, not a report-card mark: the teacher decides the mark.

Source: Alabama State Department of Education (ALSDE)

Sample questions

A taste of this unit. In the app, questions change every time and get easier or harder to match your child.

  1. Question 1

    Decomposers return nutrients to the…

    • moon
    • sun
    • clouds only
    • soil

  2. Question 2

    What would happen without decomposers?

    • Dead things would pile up
    • Plants would grow better
    • Animals would live forever
    • Nothing would change

  3. Question 3

    Where does the matter in a mushroom come from?

    • Photosynthesis
    • Rocks
    • Dead plants and animals it broke down
    • Sunlight only

  4. Question 4

    An animal that eats only other animals is a…

    • decomposer
    • producer
    • herbivore
    • carnivore

  5. Question 5

    An animal that eats only plants is a…

    • herbivore
    • producer
    • carnivore
    • decomposer

  6. Question 6

    When a deer eats grass, matter from the grass…

    • becomes part of the deer's body or is used for energy
    • turns into sunlight
    • goes back into the grass
    • disappears

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