This lesson is designed for the NEW AQA Trilogy Biology GCSE, particularly the ‘Ecology’ SoW.
 
This lesson starts with a PowerPoint slide which demonstrates how sunlight falling on plants is the initial source of energy for all living organisms. This moves on to a video which outlines the key terms related to food chains, pupils will be provided with a set of questions which they will need to answer using the video. Once pupils has completed this task pupils they can self-assess their work using the mark scheme provided.
 
Pupils will then be shown an example of a food chain and the PowerPoint slide will reiterate what the video outlined, about what a food chain and the arrow in the food chains demonstrates.
 
Pupils will then need to complete a task where they match key terms to their definitions and examples. This work can assessed once the task is complete.
 
The next part of the lesson will focus on animal populations and dynamics. The first task pupils will be given a set of questions about the impact of various changes on animal populations (i.e. predator numbers, disease). In groups/pairs they will be given a piece of A3 paper and they will need to answer the questions as best they can.
Pupils can then check their answers against the answers provided in the PowerPoint presentation.
 
Pupils will then be given a food web and asked a set of questions about how various changes in the numbers of organisms within the food web would impact others, again this work can be self-assessed.
 
The final activity is for pupils to draw a graph to represent data on the numbers of coyote and jack rabbits over the course of twenty years, pupils will then need to answer questions about this data.
 
The plenary task is for pupils to complete a food chain choosing from a set of organisms provided on the PowerPoint slide, as an extra challenge pupils could try and complete their own food webs.