This document provides instructions for an activity to examine interrelationships among plants, animals, and their environment through investigating food webs. The activity will have students find that ecosystems contain multiple overlapping food chains that form food webs, discover that organisms can be both predators and prey, and write a paragraph describing how a food web works by explaining that some animals serve as both predators and prey.

1. Harcourt Science:
Food Webs
Write On
Grade 3

2. Learner Expectation
Content Standard: 2.0 Interactions Between
Living Things and Their Environment
 The student will investigate how living things
interact with one another and with non-living
elements of their environment.
 Learning Expectation:
 2.3 Examine interrelationships among plants,
animals, and their environment.

3. In this activity you will:
 Find that all communities contain more
than one food chain.
 Discover that organisms in a food web can
be eaten by other organisms.
 Write a paragraph describing how a food
web works.

4. All ecosystems contain many
food chains. Each food chain
contains both predators and
prey.

5. A predator is an animal that hunts
another animal for food.

6. The animal that is hunted is
called the prey.

7. Many animals can be referred to
as both predators and prey.

8. Overlapping food chains are
called food webs.

9. Click the following button to
complete an activity which
demonstrates how a food web
works.

10. Writing Activity
 Write a paragraph describing how a
food web works. Use the information
you have learned in this lesson. Be sure
to tell about animals that are both
predators and prey.