Year 7 Science · Unit 1 · Lesson 12

Food Chains and Food Webs

Foundation Worksheet

Name

Date

Class

Learning Goals

Name the trophic levels in a food chain (producer → primary consumer → secondary consumer → tertiary consumer).
Explain what an arrow in a food chain represents (direction of energy flow).
Describe how a food web is built from several connected food chains.

Warm Up

Fill the gap

Choose the correct word from the word bank to complete the passage. Each word is used once. Two words in the bank are not needed.

producer consumer energy arrow photosynthesis herbivore predator decomposer nucleus

A food chain shows how moves from one living thing to the next. It always begins with a — an organism that makes its own food through . Plants, algae and seagrass are producers. The next organism in the chain is a , which is an animal that eats other organisms. A primary consumer that eats only plants is also called a . If the primary consumer is then eaten by a larger animal, that larger animal is the . In a diagram, each in a food chain points from the food to the eater — always in the direction that energy flows.

Your Turn

Odd one out

Circle the item that does not belong in each group. Then write the odd one out and explain why it does not fit in the answer column.

#	Group	Odd one out + reason
1	Grass Eucalyptus Phytoplankton Caterpillar
2	Herbivore Primary consumer Autotroph Grazer
3	Food chain Trophic level Energy flow Cell division

Show What You Know

1. Write a 4-organism Australian food chain using the following organisms: wedge-tailed eagle, caterpillar, eucalyptus leaf, superb lyrebird. Make sure your arrows point in the correct direction and label the trophic level of each organism.

Recall 2 marks

2. Explain why food webs are considered a more realistic model of feeding relationships in an ecosystem than a single food chain.

Recall 2 marks

Wrap Up

In one sentence, what was the main idea of this lesson?