Lesson 6: What is a food chain?
This Year 2 food chains lesson helps pupils understand how animals obtain food from plants and other animals and how energy moves through a simple food chain. Pupils learn to identify different sources of food, construct food chains and use arrows correctly to show the transfer of energy.
The lesson directly supports the Year 2 Science National Curriculum requirement to describe how animals obtain their food from plants and other animals, using the idea of a simple food chain, and identify and name different sources of food. Pupils also begin to explore interdependence and how living things within a habitat depend on one another.
How does a simple food chain work?
Pupils take part in a practical food chain activity using counters to represent energy moving from the sun to plants and then through different animals. They then use a differentiated food chain worksheet to construct food chains in woodland, rainforest and underwater habitats, paying particular attention to the direction of the arrows.
Year 2 food chain lesson and resources
- Launchable teaching slides
- Teacher lesson plan
- Differentiated food chain worksheet
- Practical food chain and energy transfer activity
- Woodland, rainforest and underwater food chain activities
- Assessment questions and further challenge ideas
✨ How to use the launchable slides
Launch the presentation directly in your browser and use it on your interactive whiteboard.
📝 Click Notes to see teacher guidance, answers and additional information where included.
⬅️ ➡️ To move through the presentation, click on the slides first, then use the left and right cursor arrow keys on your keyboard.
For technical and copyright reasons, these presentation slides are available to launch online rather than download.
Explore the full Year 2 Living Things and Their Habitats resources, or explore our Year 2 science scheme of work and resources.
This resource is part of the Mrs Mactivity Science Scheme of Work →
