Year 4

Sustain the chain

Students learn about the roles and interactions of consumers, producers and decomposers with their local habitat and use food chains to represent the feeding relationships. They apply their knowledge to their school grounds and develop agency in their local environment.

'SUSTAIN THE CHAIN' IS ONE OF OUR NEW TEACHING SEQUENCES FOR AC V9

  • On the 'Sequence overview' tab you'll find all the lessons in this sequence and curriculum alignment.
  • The 'Our design decisions' tab shows how key scientific ideas develop over the sequence, and shows how the sequence addresses curriculum achievement standards.
  • Have you taught this sequence? Use the Feedback button to let us know how it went!

Launch

Lesson 1 • Our local environment

Students explore the roles and interactions of consumers, producers and decomposers within a habitat by identifying how scientific knowledge can be used to support the development of the local environment.

Launch
Sustain the chain

Inquire

Lesson 2 • Follow the chain

Students explore and identify the key features of an organism’s habitat. They use a labelled diagram of a plant or animal to describe how it is interdependent on other living organisms.

Inquire
Sustain the chain

Lesson 3 • Ant picnic

Students use the scientific process to identify the preferred food of ants. They discuss the mutually beneficial relationship between plants and ants.

Inquire
Sustain the chain

Lesson 4 • Producers and consumers

Students identify the key features of producers and consumers, and use arrows to describe the movement of energy along a food chain.

Inquire
Sustain the chain

Lesson 5 • Food chains

Students explore a model of a food chain. They gather data that outline how food, shelter, predators and water affect the survival of a kangaroo population and use a graph to explain their observations.

Inquire
Sustain the chain

Lesson 6 • Decomposers and detritivores

Students explore and identify the effects of a decomposer on fruit. They identify the sequence of events that occur during decay and test for the presence of decomposers in their local environment.

Inquire
Sustain the chain

Lesson 7 • Changing habitats

Students investigate the impact of introduced organisms in a food chain through modelling. They examine how science knowledge can be used to solve a problem of an introduced plant in the Northern Territory.

Inquire
Sustain the chain

Act

Lesson 8 • Habitat stewards

Students use their knowledge of the local habitat to design a product for the classroom context, and communicate it to an audience.

Act
Sustain the chain

The Australian Academy of Science supports and encourages broad use of its material. Unless indicated below, copyright material available on this website is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

Curriculum and syllabus alignment

Achievement standards

By the end of Year 4 students identify the roles of organisms in a habitat and construct food chains. They explain the role of data in science inquiry. They identify solutions based on scientific explanations and describe the needs these meet.

Students pose questions to identify patterns and relationships and make predictions based on observations. They plan investigations using planning scaffolds, identify key elements of fair tests and describe how they conduct investigations safely. They use simple procedures to make accurate formal measurements. They construct representations to organise data and information and identify patterns and relationships. They compare their findings with those of others, assess the fairness of their investigation, identify further questions for investigation and draw conclusions. They communicate ideas and findings for an identified audience and purpose, including using scientific vocabulary when appropriate.

Australian Curriculum V9 alignment

Science as a human endeavour

Science understanding

Science inquiry