Energy Pyramid Jenga
Posted by Joshua BartosiewiczAs the 7th graders continue to learn about relationships in Ecosystems, we were able to play a game that demonstrated the potential effects of an energy Pyramid or food web when the balance is thrown off. After learning about producers (organisms that make their own food for energy for survival), consumers (organisms that eat other organisms for energy for survival) and decomposers (organisms that breakdown rotting or decaying material) and the food web; the class indulged in a game of Jenga, but this was no ordinary game of Jenga.
The Jenga tower represented the energy pyramid. The Jenga tower had sections of different colors and each color would represent a certain category of organisms. For example, the base level color represented the producers because every living organism that can’t produce its own food relies on the producers for survival. The next level up from the producers would represent the primary consumers (the animals that are eating the plants/producers) like small rodents. Moving up from there would be the secondary consumers (animals that eat other animals) like snakes and fox. The next level would be the tertiary consumers or apex predators like sharks, grizzly bears or eagles. The final level is representative of the sun considering most living organisms (with the exception of chemotrophs and a few other organisms!) need sunlight for survival.
This game showed how one disturbance to any section of the jenga tower (energy pyramid/food web) can have a ripple effect and result in the ecosystem failing or in this case, the tower to fall down. In the end of the lab, students had a better understanding of how each organism in an ecosystem rely on each other for various things such as food.
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