Relationships in an ecosystem - R2P

This resource provides a lesson plan showing how to use system thinking to teach about ecosystems. The approach used in the lesson is based on education research which is summarised in a separate research summary document.

The lesson includes an activity where individual pupils are given an organism. They then have to work with others to build a physical representation of a food chain and food web. This can then be followed by creating an ecosystem using computer simulation software.

The research summary discusses the common misconceptions pupils have about relationships in an ecosystem and introduces the concept of using a systems teaching approach which draws pupils' attention to the links between different processes in an ecosystems which shows how life in ecosystems is organised. 

By the end of the lesson pupils should be able to:

• draw food webs and interlinked food chains
• use models and analogies to explain how electrical conductors work.

This resource is part of a collection of research informed secondary science lesson plans produced as part of the Research-2-Practice (R2P) project undertaken by research teams at the University of Roehampton, University of Lincoln, York St John University and KYRA research school, between 2020 and 2021, which was funded by Wellcome.

The overall aim of the project was to enhance the quality of teaching and learning in science by giving time-pressed teachers quick and easy access to relevant research to inform their practice and provide exemplar lesson plans to show how the research could be used in the classroom. More resources can be found here.