What Is a Food Chain?

A food chain shows how energy and nutrients move through an ecosystem. For example, the Sun gives energy to plants, which are then eaten by animals, such as herbivores. The energy continues to move when carnivores eat the herbivores. This is how energy is transferred between different organisms.

This resource puts your students in the driver’s seat as they use organism cards, producer/consumer labels and energy arrows to create and record food chains for a variety of ecosystems. The resource download contains:

• 1x instruction page
• 1 x recording sheet (consisting of 2 pages)
• 1 x page of energy arrows 
• 1 x  page of producer/consumer labels
• 25 x organism cards

You may need to print multiple copies of some pages to ensure there is enough for all students/groups of students.

How To Build Food Chains Using This Resource

Follow the simple instructions below and your students will be building their own food chains in no time!

1. Once printed, cut out the picture cards, arrows and labels. Each food chain consists of five organism cards, five labels and four energy arrows.
2. Provide each student with a recording sheet.
3. Students use the organism cards, labels and energy arrows to create ecosystem-specific food chains. The label cards are placed under the organism cards with the energy arrows placed between them. The ecosystems included are desert, ocean, rainforest, swamp, forest. 
4. Students record the food chains they create on the recording sheet.

Do It Your Way… Multiple Options for Applying This Resource

This versatile resource can be used in a variety of ways to support your teaching of food chains and food webs. You might like to use it in the following ways:

• Teacher-directed whole-class activity
• Student-directed small-group activity
• Independent activity (for more-confident students)

Not that the option you choose will influence how many copies of the resource you require.

Easily Prepare This Resource for Your Students

Use the dropdown arrow on the Download button to select between the editable Google Slides or easy-print PDF version of this resource.

As this download contains an answer sheet, we recommend printing one copy of the resource, then removing the answer sheet before continuing to prepare the resource.

Print the cards on cardstock for added durability and longevity. Place all pieces in a folder or large envelope for easy access.

This resource was created by Kaitlyn Blevins, a teacher in Georgia and a Teach Starter collaborator.

Don’t stop yet! We have many more fabulous food chain resources at your fingertips!

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Food Chains – Worksheet

Use this worksheet to identify and describe the flow of energy in a food chain.

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Food Chains & Food Webs – Vocabulary Booklet

Reinforce science vocabulary by creating a booklet to reference when studying food chains and food webs.

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Food Chains - Interactive Activity

Review producers, consumers and decomposers in food chains with this interactive digital quiz.