If you’ve ever tried teaching food webs, you know it can feel a little tricky. Sure, we can show a diagram, but sometimes students just stare at it without really connecting the pieces. That’s exactly why I created a hands-on food web activity where students build the web themselves—one step at a time.
Here’s how it works:
Step 1: Read a Direction Card
Students work with a partner and read a direction out loud. For example, it might say something like, Draw the producers below the sun and near the pond. Producers are organisms that make their own food such as cattails, algae, grass, and trees. These are your “producers,” the heroes that start
the energy journey! ” They figure out what it is (a producer, like algae or grass) and place that piece on the board. I purposely designed each direction to ensure students are doing a chunk of reading, and thinking. My goal was to give my 5th graders more reading practice with science concepts.
Step 2: Place It on the Web
With each clue, students add a new producer, consumer, or decomposer. As they go, they’re practicing big science words like “primary consumer” or “decomposer”—but in a natural, meaningful way. They’re not just memorizing; they’re using the vocabulary with a partner.
Step 3: Connect the Energy
Once all the pieces are on the board, the magic happens. Students draw arrows to show who eats whom. Suddenly, what started as a pile of separate pieces turns into a full food web that they built together.
Why Students Love It
The whole activity feels like a puzzle or a quest. Kids are moving pieces around, discussing ideas, and figuring things out together. Instead of passively listening, they’re talking, reading, and problem-solving. And let’s be honest—those moments when they argue (in a good way!) over whether a frog eats insects or algae? That’s real learning happening.
Why Teachers Love It
For me, the best part is seeing how it supports my ELL students. They’re reading the clues, using the academic vocabulary with a partner, and then writing about it at the end. The sentence frames included in the activity make the writing piece doable for everyone. Students get to explain how food webs work in their own words, with just enough support to feel confident.
It’s science, reading, speaking, listening, and writing all rolled into one. And at the end of the lesson, the kids have this awesome food web they created themselves—it’s something they’re proud of. Get it here!
Ell Teacher Bliss 