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3rd grade · Science · Unit 7 of 12

Food Chains & Webs

Producers, consumers and decomposers

What your child practices

Producers, consumers and decomposers, herbivores, carnivores and omnivores, how energy moves along a food chain, and why a food web is a more complete picture.

Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) teks student expectation: 3.12(B) · the flow of energy in a food chain, and what happens when one link is removed

How we explain it

Children can open this short lesson before they practice.

  1. A food chain starts with a producer that gets energy from the Sun.
  2. Consumers eat plants or animals. Decomposers break down dead things.
  3. A food web is many food chains connected together.

Example: In grass → grasshopper → frog → heron, what does the frog eat? The arrow points from the food to the eater. The arrow into the frog comes from the grasshopper. Answer: the grasshopper

Food Chains & Webs in Texas

In the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), this is unit 7 of 12 in 3rd grade Science, after Surviving in a Habitat and before Animal Survival.

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: Texas Education Agency (TEA)

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

    Put the food chain in order. Start with the producer.

    • 🐦chickadee
    • 🐛caterpillar
    • 🍁maple leaves
    • 🦅hawk

  2. Question 2

    Which of these is a producer?

    🍁
    • a maple tree
    • a mushroom
    • a wolf
    • a frog

  3. Question 3

    In a food chain, the arrows show…

    ➡️
    • which animal is faster
    • which is bigger
    • the colors
    • which way the energy goes

  4. Question 4

    An owl eats mice and snakes. If all the mice disappear, what might happen to the owls?

    🦉
    • nothing at all
    • they may have less food
    • they will grow bigger
    • they will eat more grass

  5. Question 5

    If a disease wipes out most of the grass in a meadow, which animals are affected first?

    🌾
    • only the decomposers
    • the ones that eat the grass
    • nobody
    • only the animals that eat meat

  6. Question 6

    What does it eat? Tap an item, then tap its basket.

    Sort into: 🌿 herbivore · 🍖 carnivore · 🍽️ omnivore

    • 🦉great horned owl
    • 🐈lynx
    • 🦫beaver
    • 🐦‍⬛crow
    • 🐻black bear
    • 🫎moose

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