Classroom Snapshot
What Students Learn
Students trace energy and population effects through a food web to explain a trophic cascade.
Students see a kelp forest shift toward an urchin barren and need to explain what changed in the food web.
How the Lesson Teaches Before It Assesses
Students first learn producers, consumers, food-web links, and cascade reasoning through examples before running the model.
Core Student Actions
- Map feeding relationships
- Interpret ecosystem evidence
- Adjust a food web model
- Explain how one population change affects others
Why This Is More Than a Quiz
The central mechanic is testing ecosystem scenarios in a model, not matching organism names to definitions.
Privacy and Classroom Use
The interactive lesson runs in the browser without student accounts, names, emails, analytics, or cloud storage. Teachers can project it, assign it directly, or pair it with optional print materials.