Science - 5th Grade

Food webs in Yellowstone National Park

Download an editable 5th grade slideshow about how energy flows through a food web and explain how removing one species can change an entire ecosystem.

Subject: Science
Year group: 5th Grade
Curriculum topic: Ecosystems and food webs
Editable download: PPTX

About this resource

Built for a clear, classroom-ready lesson.

This complete lesson takes students from identifying producers, consumers and decomposers to modeling how energy flows through a Yellowstone food web and predicting what happens when one species is removed. The 1995 return of gray wolves is the case study throughout, with labeled food web and energy pyramid diagrams, vocabulary matching, whole-class checks, a cause-and-effect sequencing task and a "what if the wolves disappeared again?" discussion.

Use the deck as supplied or edit the PowerPoint to swap in a local ecosystem, match your vocabulary or change the lesson length. Answer slides are included so teachers can review each activity quickly.

Learning objectives

Identify producers, consumers and decomposers in the Yellowstone ecosystem.
Model how energy moves from the Sun through a food web.
Predict how removing one species, such as the gray wolf, can change the whole ecosystem.