Teacher Candidate: ___Angeline Xu_____________________

Date: __3/15/16_______

THE UCI LESSON PLANNER

Part 1: Classroom Information
Grade: _4____

Content Area: _Science_____________________________________

School:
Davis
Mentor Teacher: __Liz Ramos____________________
Group Size: __30____ Lesson Length: __60_____ minutes
Student Context:
Students with Special Needs
(IEP and/or 504)
Students with Specific
Language Needs (ELL)
Students with Other Learning
Needs (Behavior, Struggling
Reader, Struggling Math)

Identified Needs

Accommodations

2 English Language Learners

Visuals, work with partner for

support

Part 1: Planning for the Lesson

A: Standards
i.

Key Content Standard:

4.2.b Students know producers and consumers (herbivores, carnivores, omnivores, and
decomposers) are related in food chains and food webs and may compete with each other for
resources in an ecosystem.

ii.

Math Practice Standard or ELA Capacity: CCSS-M Standards for Mathematical

Practice, or NGSS Science and Engineering Practices, CCSS-ELA Capacity of
Literate Individuals

iii.

Related ELD Standard (must be included when using an ELA Standard):

B. Objectives
i.

Learning Objective/Goal: The students will (DO __) to (LEARN ___).

Students will sort and classify living things to create food chains and food webs.

ii.

Language Objective (transfer this from "Incorporating Academic Language"):

C. Assessments:
i.

Informal assessment strategies you will use during class (What evidence will you see and/or
hear and how will you note it?)
Asking students questions and calling a variety of students
Monitoring students as they do group work and sort the cards
Asking students for their food chains and what similarities and differences they noticed
between the food chains

ii.

Written assessment you will use to determine, for each individual student, to what extent
they have met your learning objectives. (What evidence will you collect?)
Food Chain Worksheet

D. Lesson Resources/Materials (e.g., handouts, manipulatives, text pages, special supplies):

Food Chain Worksheet

Part 2: Instructional Sequence - Engaging Students in the Learning Process

Optional: Starter and/or Homework Discussion (___ min.)
Introduction (__5_ min.): Describe how you will 1) make connections to prior knowledge, tap into
their experiences and interests or use a hook, AND 2) let students know what the objective of the
lesson is.

Remind them of what they learned last week on ecosystems

o Learned about what an ecologist does
Ask students to turn and talk to thinking partner about what ecologists do (show on the
charts?)
o Learned about ecology vocabulary
Ask students to turn and talk to thinking partners about what ecology is
Study of how living things interact with each other and their surroundings
Ask students to turn and talk to their thinking partner about what are living things
Things that are alive; have been alive, but are now dead, will one day be alive
(eggs, seeds), or were part of something alive
Whats another name for living things? (biotic)
Ask students to turn and talk to thinking partner about what non living things are/ what
are examples of nonliving things?
Have never been alive and will never be alive
Land, air, water, sunlight
Remind them that these are all things that are created by nature, not things that
are man made
Whats another name for non-living things? (abiotic)
o Remind them how we also made observations about the living and non living things in our
learning garden

Tell students that today they will be learning about the living things that might be found on the
playground and at school and they will be classifying and sorting them and creating food chains from
them

Body of the Lesson (__53____ minutes): Describe step-by-step what the teacher and the students will
be doing during the lesson.

Ask students to turn and talk to thinking partner about what a food chain is
o Tell students that all animals depend on plants and some animals eat plants for food, and other
animals eat animals that eat plants
Show a leave with evidence of insect damage
o Ask students to turn and talk to their thinking partners about what may have happened to cause
this damage
Possible answer: an insect may have eaten part of it
o Ask students for ideas of ways they could find out who eats what in the playground
Remind them to think about what an ecologist does- what do they observe?
Show the food chain cards under the document camera
o Explain that the cards show some of the typical plants and animals on a school playground.
o Point out that each card names the animal or plant and indicates if it is a producer, consumer,
omnivore, herbivore, or carnivore
Review each term
Ask students to turn and talk tot thinking partner about what a producer and consumer
is
Producers produce food through photosynthesis; ex: green plants
Consumers are organisms that feed on other organisms in a food chain
Ask students to turn and talk to thinking partner about what a omnivore, herbivore, or
carnivore is.
Omnivore: organism that eats both plants and animals
Herbivore: organism that feeds only on plants
Carnivore: organism that feed only on other animals
o Tell students that they will first be sorting the animals and plants in any way that they agree
upon
Put students into groups (2 for each row; 10 groups of 3 students)
Tell students that they are going to be working on the floor so we are going to push the desks toward the
sides of the room
o Pass out one set of cards for each group
o Have students sort the cards
o Monitor and look for students who sort according to the categories: consumer or producer,
omnivore, herbivore, or carnivore
o Have a few students bring their groups up and show how they sorted their cards under document
camera; write on postits the category names
If students have not sorted according to these categories, discuss categories they chose
and aks them to sort another way using these categories.
Model my cards underdocument camera and ask students to identify a insect
o Then ask students to find another card that represents a plant or animal eaten by that animal
o Tell students that food chains are not isolated and different food chains can also be
interconnected to make food webs
o Then ask them to find something that eats the first animal continuing until the list is complete
o Model writing the chain on the white board/ chart paper

Explain that they have just helped me create a food chain, which shows what an organism eats
as well as what it is eaten by
o Point out that when drawing the food chain, you need to be careful how you draw the arrows
Students often make the mistake of drawing arrows to show who is eating whom, but
arrows in food chains should show the direction of energy flow- from sun to plants to
herbivores, to other consumers (opposite of whats eating what)
Arrows show flow of energy
Have students work in their groups to make a food chain
Have students share their food chains and write them on the board/ chart
o After writing down all the food chains, ask them to talk with their groups about what are some
similarities and differences they notice between the food chains
o Point out that each chain begins with green plants and that chains can be different lengths
o Point out that some organisms appear in different chains
o Ask them to discuss with their group how something can be in several places
Point out that they also eat many different kinds of food coming from both plan and
animal materials: lettuce, broccoli, chicken, beef, pork
o Ask students to talk with group about relationships connecting the two chains
Draw connections between the chains on the chart paper/ white board
Explain that this whole process of who eats what is so interwoven that we call it a food
web
A food chain is one link of a food web
Food webs identify the relationships among the producers, consumers, and
decomposers in an ecosystem (community of interacting organisms and their
environment)
Ask students to solve this mystery: who ate the caterpillar? Turn and discuss with your group what
suspects, or organisms might have eaten the caterpillar and what clues might have lead you too that
o Pull sticks to share
If time, give another mystery to the students: a hungry cricket has just arrived on the playground and is
likely to stay. What food possibilities might have brought it there? Have students work with groups to
determine possible choices
o

Make sure that you include the specific academic language strategies you will use to support your
students in using academic language to talk/write about the math they are learning.
Make sure you identify the specific assessment you are using in the Body of the Lesson.
Homework (if you are assigning homework, what will it be?):
Closure (___2___minutes): Describe how you will prompt the students to summarize the lesson and
restate the learning objective.

Restate objective
o Today we sorted and classified living things to create food chains and food webs