Concept cartoon: producers

Educational value

• This concept cartoon can be used as a diagnostic assessment tool to uncover students' pre-existing misconceptions, or alternative conceptions, about the nature of producers that are found at the start of food chains. The concept cartoon can be used as a prompt for class discussion to elicit any such understandings that students might hold.
• Misconceptions, or alternative conceptions, can be difficult to shift from students' thinking. However, by challenging these ideas with a number of counter examples, students may begin to consider other, more accurate, explanations for phenomena. For instance, a student who mistakenly thinks that plants are always at the start of a food chain could be exposed to other resources that show marine organisms such as phytoplankton and microbes, which photosynthesise or perform chemosynthesis.
• The image can be used as a summative assessment tool at the end of a unit on producers. The scenario shown could be used to check if individual students hold a limited understanding of the role of producers in food chains. If this is the case, they may need assistance to build a richer understanding of the concept before moving on to consider more complex situations such as how food chains interact to form food webs.

Year level

4; 5; 6; 7; 8; 9

Topics Producers (Food chains) Food webs