Activity Introduction
In this lesson, students will be immersed in, and connect with, the documentary film 2040, focusing on the topic of food chains and food webs. Students begin by completing a Flipped Classroom preparation activity to introduce the topics of food chains and food webs. Back in the classroom, students are asked to share what they learnt about food chains and webs before exploring energy flow and trophic levels in a marine food web. They then participate in an activity to demonstrate how food webs can collapse when organisms within the food web experience a decline in numbers.
Students then explore how seaweed farming could improve marine food webs as well as benefit human populations. Finally, students are asked to think about what other actions humans can take to improve marine food webs and to communicate their ideas through a poster or infographic.
- Students will understand what a food chain is and what a food web is.
- Students will understand how marine food webs are vulnerable to human activities.
- Students will understand actions that humans can take to improve marine food webs and habitats.
- Topic: Sustainability, Biodiversity.
- Unit of work: 2040 – Science – Years 7 to 10
- Time required: 90 mins.
- Level of teacher scaffolding: Medium – oversee activities and facilitate class discussions.
- Keywords: 2040 documentary, food chains, food webs, habitats, marine environments, human impacts, seaweed, algae.
To view our Australian Curriculum alignment click here.
To view our NZ Curriculum alignment click here.
- Student Worksheets – one copy per student.
- Device capable of presenting a video to the class.
- Food chains and food webs factsheet.
- Trophic levels factsheet.
- Marine food webs activity.
- Marine food webs activity – answers,
- Ocean Acidification Factsheet.
2040 is an innovative feature documentary that looks to the future, but is vitally important NOW! Director Damon Gameau embarks on a journey to explore what the future could look like by the year 2040 if we simply embraced the best solutions already available to us to improve our planet and shifted them rapidly into the mainstream.
In Australia: Order the Schools Version of the 2040 DVD. The Schools Version includes an educational license and is for Australian primary and secondary schools that wish to utilise the film as a learning tool or host free on-site screenings for the school community.
In New Zealand: Order the Schools Version of the 2040 DVD. The Schools Version includes an educational license and is for New Zealand primary and secondary schools that wish to utilise the film as a learning tool or host free on-site screenings for the school community.
If you are teaching in either New Zealand or Australia, you can now organise a virtual screening of the film for your class. To enquire about this option, simply email [email protected] and the 2040 team will help you set this up! If you have already bought a DVD of the film and you have a ClickView account, you can email the team for permission to upload the film to your account to make it more easily accessible for your teachers and students.
Cool Australia’s curriculum team continually reviews and refines our resources to be in line with changes to the Australian Curriculum.
Cool Australia, GoodThing Productions and Regen Pictures would like to acknowledge the generous contributions of Good Pitch Australia, Shark Island Institute, Documentary Australia Foundation, The Caledonia Foundation and our philanthropic partners in the development of these teaching resources.
Teacher preparation
