Teacher Resources & Lesson Ideas

Website provides easy to read graphics for the percentage of energy being transferred by producers and consumers.
http://www.saburchill.com/ans02/chapters/chap017.html

Narrative explaining how maggots are rich in protein because they feed on waste.
http://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/awpgz/protein_black_soldier_fly/

Forging a new food chain as black soldier flies eat manure and are then turned into food for livestock.
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-66529454.html

Black soldier flies (maggots) in your manure compost
http://blacksoldierflyblog.com/

Earthworms use manure as a food source
http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1876&from=rss

Black soldier fly grubs being feed to fish
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPFMmQjV33w

Toads eating fly grubs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RYykLqKy5c

You Tube - Thousands of restaurants in San Francisco are donating their leftover food products to local farms in order to create compost for growing produce.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96cgF751_CY&feature=related

History of the domestication of Chickens – a kids website
http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/economy/chicken.htm
 
Chickens compete little with humans for food, produce meat at low cost, and are a nutritional resource
http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=1831&page=79

Cow Power – Suggested activities for this episode are on page 10 of this PDF document. Activities 2 and 3 should be used with the other Down and Dirty Science episodes “Gas from Biomass: from Poop to Power” and “Cooking with Compost”.
http://www-tc.pbs.org/newshour/thenews/materials/cowlp.pdf

Mathematics Connections to Data Analysis, Representations and Communications

Mathematics and energy transfer from food – lesson on nutrition – page 4 has student doing graphs and data analysis for calorie intake from food sources.
http://www.greenscreen.org/articles_teachers/TG%20Global%20Food%20SR.pdf

Teacher demonstration with student interaction on energy transfer through the food web (could also be used as an embedded assessment activity) Energy flow in the ecosystem – simple explanation and class activity teacher can do to help students understand the amount of energy transfer from the sun to plants and the resulting food chain. Use of mathematics (percents and measurements)
http://www.usoe.k12.ut.us/curr/Science/sciber00/8th/energy/sciber/ecosys.htm