Predicting Changes in Ecosystems Lesson Plan (TEKS 5.12B): A Complete 5E Lesson for Food Webs and Energy Flow

Chris Kesler · 10 min read

Ask a 5th grader what would happen if all the frogs in a pond disappeared. The honest answer most kids will give is "the snakes would be sad" or "nothing." The idea that one missing species could send ripples up AND down through an entire food web is not something kids see on their own. They have to feel it.

If I were teaching this to 5th graders, the move I'd reach for is the yarn web. Hand every kid in the class a card with an organism on it (grass, grasshopper, mouse, snake, hawk, decomposer) and have them stand in a circle. Toss a ball of yarn from organism to organism to build a tangled web. Then announce "drought, the grass dies" and the grass kid sits down with a tug on the yarn. Every kid connected to the grass feels the tug. By the time three or four species sit down, the web has collapsed and the rest of the class is sitting on the floor.

That's the core idea behind this 5E lesson for TEKS 5.12B. The verb in the standard is predict. Kids have to feel the connections before they can predict what happens when one piece changes.

⏱ 10 class periods 📓 5th Grade Life Science 🧪 TEKS 5.12B 🎯 Differentiated for D + M 💻 Print or Digital

Inside the Predicting Changes in Ecosystems 5E Lesson

The 5E instructional model walks students through five phases: Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate. It flips the traditional lecture-first sequence on its head. Students explore a concept hands-on before you ever explain it, which means by the time you do explain it, they have something to hook the vocabulary onto.

I switched to the 5E model years ago and stopped going back. Kids retain more, ask better questions, and stop staring at me waiting to be told the answer. The Predicting Changes in Ecosystems 5E Lesson is built on this framework from start to finish. Here's how it plays out across the five phases.

🎯 Engage

📷 Engage image — objective slide OR word wall card

Day one is a teacher-led whole-class yarn food web activity. Every student gets a card with a different organism on it and stands in a big circle. A ball of yarn passes from organism to organism to build a tangled food web. Then the teacher announces a change (a drought, a wildfire, a new predator, a disease) and one organism sits down with a tug on the yarn. Every connected student feels the tug. Within minutes, half the class is sitting and the web has collapsed.

By the end of the period, kids have physically felt how one change ripples through an entire ecosystem and they can explain in their own words why a food web isn't a one-way street. Nobody has heard a vocabulary lecture yet. That's the point. They're walking into the rest of the unit with a working mental model, not a memorized definition.

What's included in the Engage:

Teacher directions for the yarn food web activity
Printable organism cards and a student observation sheet
Answer key for the discussion questions
Four learning objective slides (standard verbatim, "Predict" highlighted, "I CAN...", and "WE WILL...")
An illustrated Life Science Word Wall in English and Spanish covering the full unit vocabulary

🔬 Explore

📷 Explore image 1 — wide shot of Station Lab in action

The Predicting Changes in Ecosystems Station Lab is the heart of the Explore phase. Students rotate through 8 stations (plus a 9th challenge station for early finishers) over one class period. The Station Lab is split into four input stations (where kids take in new information) and four output stations (where they show what they learned).

The four input stations:

🎬 Watch It! — Students watch a short video on food webs and ecosystem changes, with guided questions.
📖 Read It! — A one-page reading passage at two differentiated levels, with a Spanish version included.
🔬 Explore It! — A hands-on food web sorting activity where students predict the effects of removing different organisms.
💻 Research It! — Reference cards on real ecosystem changes (wildfires, droughts, invasive species, hurricanes) with examples of the consequences.

The four output stations:

📋 Organize It! — A card sort where students place organisms in a food web and trace arrows showing energy flow.
🎨 Illustrate It! — Students draw a food web of their choosing and predict what happens if one organism is removed.
✍️ Write It! — Three open-ended questions in complete sentences (this is where you see who really gets it).
📝 Assess It! — A short formative check with multiple choice and a fill-in-the-blank vocabulary paragraph.

📷 Explore image 2 — close-up of featured station (Explore It! or Organize It!)

Print and digital versions are both included. If you want the full breakdown of what happens at every single station, what students produce, and how to set it up, that's in our dedicated Station Lab post.

→ Read the full Predicting Changes in Ecosystems Station Lab walkthrough 8 stations, materials list, teacher tips

The Station Lab is included in the full 5E lesson. You don't need to buy it separately if you're getting the whole unit.

📚 Explain

📷 Explain image 1 — Presentation slide screenshot

Here's the real payoff of doing the Engage and Explore before the Explain: by the time kids hit this phase, they've already felt a food web collapse with their own hands and traced energy through it at the Station Lab. They have a working understanding before you ever start naming things. The discussions get deeper, the questions get sharper, and you spend less time defining and more time pushing their thinking.

The Predicting Changes in Ecosystems Presentation walks 5th graders through the full scope of TEKS 5.12B, one concept at a time. The deck opens with the Essential Questions (how does changing one part of an ecosystem affect the cycling of matter, and how do changes affect the flow of energy in a food web) and then builds out the framework. Energy flows through an ecosystem from the Sun to producers to consumers, getting smaller at each step. Matter cycles through the same ecosystem, getting reused over and over thanks to decomposers.

📷 Explain image (middle) — Presentation slide screenshot (classification hierarchy, Essential Question, or category comparison)

Students learn that producers (plants) use sunlight to make food. Consumers eat producers or other consumers, sorted into herbivores, carnivores, and omnivores. Decomposers (fungi, bacteria, worms) break down dead organisms and return matter to the soil. Each level of the food web is a trophic level, and energy gets smaller as you move up the pyramid (most energy is lost as heat at each step). The deck includes a built-in interactive notebook activity where students arrange organisms into an energy pyramid and use arrows to show energy flow.

The change half of the unit covers what happens when something shifts in the ecosystem. Competition can intensify when resources get scarce. New predators or invasive species can throw the food web out of balance. Human impacts include both negative changes (deforestation in the Amazon disrupting food chains, overfishing depleting populations) and positive changes (sustainable farming, careful hunting and fishing regulations that manage populations). Kids work through a real data table from Yellowstone Park showing how the reintroduction of wolves in 1995 affected the elk population. They see the numbers shift over a decade and start to understand that ecosystems aren't static. The deck wraps with a Crack the Code activity where students decide whether different environmental changes would have positive or negative effects.

📷 Explain image 2 — Presentation slide screenshot

For every concept, students see a diagram, a real-world example, and a quick action they have to do. That repetition (different changes, same three-part rhythm) is what bakes the predict verb of TEKS 5.12B into long-term memory.

What makes the Predicting Changes in Ecosystems Presentation different from a typical food web slideshow is that kids are doing something on almost every single slide. It's not a lecture deck. It's a participation deck. "Your answer:" prompts appear on most slides, Brain Breaks reset attention every few slides, Quick Action INB tasks (the energy pyramid sort, a positive vs. negative impact match, a food web prediction) show up throughout, and Think About It prompts push deeper into bigger ideas like "how would removing fish from a marine ecosystem impact other consumers?" The deck closes with a Check for Understanding tied back to the Essential Questions.

The Explain materials in this product include:

An editable 28-slide Presentation at two differentiated levels (Dependent and Modified), works in PowerPoint or Google Slides
A guided fill-in-the-blank student notes handout that mirrors the Presentation, with answer key
A Paper Interactive Notebook (English and Spanish) students cut, fold, and glue into their notebooks
A Digital Interactive Notebook at both levels with answer keys, for 1:1 classrooms or Google Classroom

The Explain runs across two class periods. The built-in Think About It prompts are where the real discussion happens, so let those breathe.

🛠️ Elaborate

📷 Elaborate image — Student Choice Project board or sample student work

The Elaborate phase is where students stretch what they learned about food webs and ecosystem changes and put it into a project of their choosing. In this 5th grade Life Science lesson, that's a Student Choice Project board with six different project options plus a "design your own" pathway.

Students might build a 3-D food web mobile that shows energy flow with arrows, write a children's book about an ecosystem change (a drought, a wildfire, a new species) and what happened to every organism, design a news report style infographic about a real event like the Yellowstone wolves or the Texas fire ant invasion, or perform a short skit telling the story of a food web before and after a major change. There are options for kids who love to write, kids who love to draw, kids who love to build, and kids who love to perform. Whatever the project, the point is the same: students apply food webs, energy flow, and matter cycling to a real-world artifact instead of a worksheet.

Choice is the whole point. By letting students pick how they show their thinking, you get more authentic work for TEKS 5.12B and you actually get to see what they understand about predicting ecosystem changes.

The rubric (the part teachers actually want)

Every project, no matter which option a student picks, is graded on the same rubric with five categories:

Vocabulary — At least four words from the lesson are used in context.
Concepts — At least two key concepts from the lesson are referenced.
Presentation — The project grabs attention and is well-organized.
Clarity — Easy to understand. Free of typos.
Accuracy — Drawings and models are accurate. The science is right.

The rubric uses a minus / check / plus shorthand on every row so you can grade a stack of projects quickly without re-reading every criterion.

Two differentiated versions in one file

The standard version is for students ready for independent application of food web concepts. The Reinforcement version is for students who need additional vocabulary or concept support. Three of the six options are swapped for projects with a tighter vocabulary tie-in, and "design your own" is replaced with "collaborate with the teacher" so kids aren't pitching cold.

✅ Evaluate

The Evaluate phase wraps the unit with a formal assessment. It's not all bubble-in. Several questions hand students a food web diagram and ask them to predict what happens when one organism is removed.

The full assessment has 12 questions across five formats:

Multiple choice (4 questions) covering producers, consumers, decomposers, and trophic levels
Hotspot / visual (2 questions) where students trace energy flow in a food web and circle the producer or top consumer
Multiselect (2 questions) where students pick all the organisms affected by a change in the food web
Short answer (2 questions) on predicting effects of a drought or invasive species on an ecosystem
Multipart scenario (2 questions) with a real-world food web change students explain using cycling and flow concepts

A modified version is included for students who need additional support, with fewer multiple-choice distractors and sentence-starter scaffolds on the short-answer items.

If you've taught all five phases, this assessment shouldn't surprise anyone. It's a chance for kids to show you they get it.

How everything fits together

If you want the whole experience (Engage hook, the Station Lab as the Explore, the Explain day with Presentation and interactive notebook, the Student Choice Elaborate, and the Evaluate assessment all in one download), that's the Predicting Changes in Ecosystems Complete 5E Science Lesson.

If you only need the one-day hands-on activity, the Station Lab works as a standalone. Most teachers buy the full 5E because the Station Lab works harder when it's bookended by a strong Engage and a follow-up Explain. But both are honest options.

Two options

Predicting Changes in Ecosystems Complete 5E Lesson cover

Full 5E Lesson — ~10 class periods $13.20 Get the 5E Lesson

Predicting Changes in Ecosystems Station Lab cover

Just the Station Lab — 1–2 class periods $7.20 Get the Station Lab

What you need to teach Predicting Changes in Ecosystems (TEKS 5.12B)

Materials beyond what's in the download:

One ball of yarn or thick string for the Engage food web activity
Printed organism cards (one per student) for the Engage circle
Optional name tags or lanyards to display each kid's organism card during the activity
Pencils, colored pencils or markers, and printed student pages
A device with internet for the Watch It! station and the slide deck

Standard covered: Texas TEKS 5.12B — Predict how changes in the ecosystem affect the cycling of matter and flow of energy in a food web; and See the full standard breakdown →

Grade level: 5th grade science

Time: About 10 class periods of 45 minutes each, done with fidelity. The product also ships with a compressed sample unit plan if you need to move faster.

Common misconceptions this lesson clears up

"If one species disappears, only the species that ate it are affected"
The effects ripple in both directions through a food web. If frogs disappear, the snakes that ate frogs lose food (effect goes UP the chain), and the bugs that frogs ate explode in numbers (effect goes DOWN the chain). Then those extra bugs eat more plants, which affects the plant population, which affects every other animal that eats plants. The change always touches more parts of the web than expected.
"Energy keeps flowing the same way no matter what changes in an ecosystem"
Energy flow depends entirely on the food web staying intact. If the producers (plants) get wiped out, less energy enters the system in the first place. If the consumers that pass energy up the chain disappear, the energy stops flowing to higher levels. Energy flow can slow down, redirect, or shrink whenever something changes in the web.
"Decomposers aren't important to the cycling of matter"
Decomposers (fungi, bacteria, worms) are the unsung heroes of every food web. They break down dead plants and animals and return the matter to the soil so plants can use it again. Without decomposers, dead organisms would pile up and the matter trapped inside them couldn't get back into the cycle. Plants would run out of nutrients. The whole ecosystem would crash.
"Adding a new species to an ecosystem always helps it"
New species introduced to an ecosystem (especially ones that didn't naturally belong there) often cause big problems. Without natural predators, an introduced species can take over, eat all the food, and outcompete native species. The fire ant in Texas, the kudzu vine in the southeastern US, and zebra mussels in the Great Lakes are all examples of introduced species that disrupted the energy flow and matter cycle in ways nobody predicted.

What's included in the Predicting Changes in Ecosystems 5E Lesson download

📷 Inside-the-product — add screenshot of Read It passage or sample answer sheet

When you buy the Predicting Changes in Ecosystems Complete 5E Lesson, you get a single download with the whole unit:

✅ Engage materials — teacher directions, organism cards, student observation sheet, answer key, four learning objective slides, illustrated Life Science Word Wall (English + Spanish)
✅ The full Station Lab — 8 stations + 1 challenge, print and digital, two reading levels, Spanish Read It!
✅ Explain materials — editable 28-slide Presentation at two differentiated levels (with built-in Brain Breaks, Quick Action INB tasks, and Think About It prompts), guided fill-in-the-blank student notes handout with answer key, Paper Interactive Notebook (English + Spanish), Digital Interactive Notebook at two levels with answer keys
✅ Elaborate (Student Choice Projects) — 6 project options + design-your-own, plus a Reinforcement version with vocabulary-focused alternatives, 5-category rubric included
✅ Summative assessment — full 12-question version and modified version with sentence-starter scaffolds, both with answer keys
✅ Sample 8-day unit plan — day-by-day pacing guide

A couple of real-talk tips from running this lesson

1. Don't skip the yarn web on Day 1, even if you're behind.

Kids who skip it come into the Station Lab without the picture in their head. Kids who do it walk into the Station Lab already understanding that food webs are connected in every direction. It's 15 minutes that earns back two days of confused questions later.

2. Use the Yellowstone wolves as your anchor example in the Explain.

Pull up the actual Yellowstone wolf reintroduction data and a satellite image of the park before and after. Real numbers from a real ecosystem make this lesson hit harder than any made-up example.

3. Save 10 minutes at the end of the Station Lab day for a class debrief.

Ask: "If we removed the decomposers from any ecosystem, what would happen first, and what would happen eventually?" That five-minute conversation is the bridge to the Explain day.

Get the Predicting Changes in Ecosystems 5E Lesson

Buy the full Predicting Changes in Ecosystems 5E Lesson — $13.20

Or if you only need the one-day hands-on Station Lab:

Buy the Predicting Changes in Ecosystems Station Lab — $7.20

(The Station Lab is included in the full 5E Lesson)

Frequently asked questions

Does this cover all of TEKS 5.12B?

Yes. The full standard is addressed across all five phases, with the "predict" verb baked into the Engage, Explore, and Elaborate activities.

What do my students need to know before this lesson?

A basic understanding of biotic and abiotic factors (from TEKS 5.12A) and the difference between producers and consumers. The Engage and Station Lab will reinforce both.

How long does it take to teach?

Done with fidelity, about 10 class periods of 45 minutes each: one day for the yarn web Engage, two days for the Station Lab, two days for the Presentation and Interactive Notebook, three days for the Student Choice Project, and one to two days for review and the assessment. The product also ships with a compressed 8-day sample unit plan if you need to move faster.

Do I need special supplies?

Just a ball of yarn and the printed organism cards. Most teachers already have yarn on hand from another project.

Does this work for digital classrooms?

Yes. Every component has a digital version. The Station Lab is fully digital-ready (Google Slides), the Presentation works in Google Slides, and the Student Choice Projects can be submitted as videos, slide decks, or written work.

Is this 5E lesson aligned to NGSS too?

It aligns most directly with 5-LS2-1 (developing a model to describe the movement of matter among plants, animals, decomposers, and the environment). Built TEKS-first, but the standards overlap heavily.