Summary
Using a number of native plant and animal cards and a ball of string students simulate a working ecosystem.
(** Download the full set of plant and animal cards below)

Each card has the common name, scientific name and where available the Aboriginal name - mostly from the Melbourne region (Woiwurrong), although some are from the south west of Victoria (Gunditjmara).

Objectives
Students will gain an understanding of ecosystems and the relationships between plants and animals. The food web will also provide an understanding of impacts on ecosystems and their lasting effects.

Materials

»	The LandLearn plant and animal cards
»	Hole punch
»	2 balls of string
»	Scissors

Student Connections
All food webs begin with plants - this enables students to understand the connections between the range of plant and animal species that are found all around us. Students will be able to understand the food web as more than a two-dimensional system. It will also give them the opportunity to place themselves in the food web and see the impacts they may have on a range of systems around them.

Activities:

1.	Allocate a plant/animal card to each student (the cards can be laminated if you would like them to last longer)
2.	Punch two holes in the top of each card and tie a length of string to fit around the students neck
3.	Ask students to make a large circle
4.	Ask students to read cards to themselves and find out where their animal lives, what they eat, and sometimes, what eats them
5.	Place 1 or 2 students in the centre of the circle with the balls of string - they can be the sun or the energy transfer
6.	Start with any student and ask them to identify where they sleep or what they eat (ie Kangaroo eats Tussock grass)
7.	One of the students in the middle gives one end of the string to the Kangaroo and takes the other end to the Tussock grass and asks them to hold onto the string
8.	Identify something else that uses the tussock grass (ie the Eastern Barred Bandicoot nests in the tussock grass)
9.	Roll out the string and ask the Eastern Barred Bandicoot to hold onto the string.
10.	What does the EBB eat - insects - take the string to the invertebrate person and ask them to hold it
11.	If this is the end of the line then cut the string and start again with a new animal and a new web
12.	After a while you will have a range of webs. Then start adding in effects such as - what if the red gum dies? Everyone attached to the red gum has to sit down - do this with a range of impacts such as:
	» Decrease in water quality » Loss of tussock grass » Pesticides kill the invertebrates » The red gums are cut down » Koalas eat all of the manna gums

Wrap up
Ask students to design their own food web - what do they eat - what else relies on that food, what does that food eat/need to survive, where did that food come from? As a class they could make a wall chart of the web of life that they are a part of - they could make the links on the chart with string or wool.

Assessment

»	Identify the relationships of a range of familiar systems (the garden, school yard, farm)
»	Students can explain what they have learnt by drawing or writing their own food web applied to a familiar situation.

Print Version - Plant and animal cards » PDF - Meet the Locals - food web student exercise [PDF 1.6 MB]