Journal Assignment Idea 

1. Students list all the foods in their lunch or another recent meal. Have students draw self-portraits at the top of the page, and then draw and label pictures of the different foods in their meal. Then have students create a diagram training the origin of their food back to the sun..

2. Have students write a short story from the perspective of a producer, consumer, or decomposer based on the ecosystem setting of one of the Michigan posters.

Extensions

1. Classifying Producers, Consumers, and Decomposers. Students work in groups or independently to classify the different organisms on their posters as producers, consumers (herbivore, omnivore, carnivore), or decomposers using the It’s All Connected! student activity at the end of this lesson.

2. Energy Flow Scavenger Hunt (included following this lesson). Students take a field trip into the schoolyard for a scavenger hunt to reinforce understanding of terms and concepts used in Lesson 2.

3. Who Am I? (included following this lesson). This two-part interactive activity reinforces the terms producer, consumer, decomposer, predator, prey, and food chain. Students become familiar with how these terms can be used to classify living things and then formulate questions using the terms.

4. Energy Flow Game (on the MEECS Ecosystems & Biodiversity CD). A high-energy game in which students role-play parts of the ecosystem—plants, herbivores, carnivores, and decomposers. This activity can also be used to simulate the bioaccumulation of toxins.

5. Sandwich Super Sleuths (on the MEECS Ecosystems & Biodiversity CD). In this activity, students attempt to discover where a tomato and cheese sandwich actually originated. They trace a food item from its place as a sandwich ingredient back to where it was originally grown.

6. The Great Lakes Food Web Drama (on the MEECS Ecosystems & Biodiversity CD). In this read-aloud drama, students are introduced to some of the organisms of the Great Lakes and to the five trophic levels they occupy in the food web.

7. Mini-Ecosystem Terrarium/Aquarium Project (refer to Extension 4 of Lesson 1). Students diagram one or two food chains that describe the feeding relationships between the living things. Also, have students identify producers, consumers, and decomposers.

8. Classroom Ecosystem Mural Project (refer to Extension 5 of Lesson 1). Students add to their ecosystem mural (forest, pond, etc.), identifying producers, consumers, and decomposers and showing links between organisms that feed on one another.