5th Grade Ocean Ecosystems
Fifth graders at Trevvett Elementary have been learning about the ocean zones and ecosystems (SOL5.6). Today students in Ms. Reed’s class created animations illustrating an ocean food chain. First, we did a bit of research. I asked the students to think of an ocean creature they wanted to include in their food chain, then they had to research what it eats and what eats it. I pointed out that all food chains start with the sun’s energy, so they had to follow their food chain back to the beginning. For example, I modeled the process with a jellyfish. I did a Google searches for “What does a jellyfish eat?” and “What eats a jellyfish?” I discovered that jellyfish eat small plants (phytoplankton) and their predators include tuna. From there, I found out that phytoplankton get their energy from the sun and tuna get eaten by sharks. Once our research was finished, we were ready to illustrate the ocean food chain. We used ABCYa! Animate to create the animations. We showed the suns’s rays causing a plant to grow, then added different animals to move in and eat the previous living thing. We posted their animations to an album in Schoology, but you can see them all here.