Self Assessment

Task 1: What understanding and misconceptions about food chains and feeding relationships are revealed by these pupil-generated food chains?

Task 2: Below are some teacher questions and pupil responses which reveal some misconceptions and incomplete understanding.

• Consider how you would appropriately respond to some of these answers.

Teacher question 1: What kinds of predators live in the woods around here?

Pupil responses:

• birds, insects and animals
• pigeons
• snakes, poisonous spiders and crocodiles
• venus fly traps

Teacher question 2: What’s happening here? (showing pupils the following food chain:)

Pupil responses:

• it means that foxes eat rabbits and green plants
• after the fox eats the rabbit, we have to give it food or it will die
• there are loads of rabbits and quite a lot of foxes - but if all the rabbits got killed, then we'd have to feed the foxes or they would all die too

Teacher question 3: What would happen to the other living things if all the foxes died?

Pupil responses:

• nothing!
• the rabbits would be happy and more would grow
• the rabbits would grow bigger

Teacher question 4: Why are there more rabbits than foxes?

Pupil responses:

• so the foxes don't get hungry
• because there's lots of grass
• because someone feeds them
• because rabbits have lots of babies

Teacher question 5: How come the dead plants and animals in the woods disappear?

Pupil responses:

• they just disappear!
• birds and mice eat them
• they rot, then insects eat them
• people bury them
• they go into the soil and fertilise it, and keep making the soil deeper