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The Recycling Center Garden Energy Path

Use recycling-center garden observations to model how energy in animal food was once energy from the sun.

Grade 5ScienceInteractive · Printable

Aligned to5-PS3-1

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What’s included

Single worksheet
Auto-graded online
1 NGSS standard
Printable answer key
14 questions
Classroom-ready

Details

Format: Interactive · Printable
Grade: Grade 5
Subject: Science
Question types: Fill in the blank, Multiple choice, Matching, Circle the answer, Sorting, Short answer, Drawing

About this worksheet

What students practice

Students build models tracing energy in animal food back to sunlight.
Students use observations to explain cause-and-effect changes in a food-energy pathway.
Students distinguish sunlight, plant food, and animal food-energy transfers in a model.

How to use

Read the investigation report together, then have students use the observations to complete and evaluate food-energy models. Encourage them to label each arrow with what it represents.

Curriculum

NGSS standard covered

5-PS3-1

Use models to show that the energy in animals' food was once energy from the sun.

Preview

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Name Date

The Recycling Center Garden Energy Path

Use observations to model where food energy began.

A Change at the Garden Bed

Read the report and observation table. Use the evidence to answer the questions.

The Green Loop at Northside Recycling Center

Northside Recycling Center turns collected food scraps into compost. Workers mix the finished compost into a garden bed beside the sorting shed. The compost helps the soil hold water and supplies materials that plants use to grow. It is not a source of food energy for the kale plants.

The bed held kale plants that caterpillars sometimes ate. Wrens visited the bed and ate some of the caterpillars. The class made a model to trace food energy in this path. The model began with the Sun, because plants use light energy to make food. An animal gets food energy by eating a plant or another animal.

A shade screen covered part of the bed during the first observation. A windstorm tore the screen, so workers removed it before the second observation. The class kept the watering schedule and observation area the same. They wondered what changed next and whether the observations could support a food-energy model.

The numbers are class observations from two four-day periods. They are evidence for a model, not a measurement of the amount of energy in each organism.

What changed between the two observation periods?