Producers and Consumers Worksheets

About this resource

What is a producer? What does a herbivore eat? Who eats the rabbit? This is a complete kit for one science idea: producers and consumers in a food chain. Seven short reading passages (grass, a rabbit, a hawk, a sunflower, a caterpillar, a frog and a bear) each give ONE role and what the living thing eats, and every page after that asks about something the child was just given to read. It covers producers, consumers, herbivores, carnivores and omnivores, and the order of a food chain. It comes with a tracker, a class grid and a family page, so nothing has to be written from scratch.

EVERYTHING INSIDE (32 pages)

• 17 student pages in 7 page types: Meet the Living Things, Read About (seven pages), True or False, Match It (clues) and Food Chain Order, Fill It In (two pages), Cut and Paste (three pages) and Write About a Food Chain
• 7 reading passages of 6 short sentences each (42 sentences, none longer than 12 words), with words to know
• 85 scored items on 15 pages, every answer read from the passages, never typed by hand
• 22 true-or-false items: 2 on each reading page and 8 on the True or False page
• 27 matching answers: 7 clues to match to a name, and 6 food chains (20 cards) to put in order
• 12 fill-in blanks from word boxes of nine words, three of them spare
• 24 cut-and-paste pieces on 3 sort mats: producer or consumer, herbivore or carnivore, omnivore or herbivore
• 2 answer keys
• 1 tracker (page, page type, items right, date) and 1 whole-class progress grid
• 1 team note (a hand-off page between team meetings) and 1 home page
• 1 filled example (an invented student), 1 phrase bank (16 observable-language starters), 1 binder cover and 6 divider tabs with a spine label to cut out
• Start Here and a how-to-read-a-page page

The Page Types, Easiest First

1. Meet the Living Things (1 dot): seven small cards, each with its kind and what it eats; what a food chain is; six words to know; three lines to write a favorite.

2. Read About, 7 pages (2 dots): a passage of six short sentences, the words to know, two statements to circle true or false, and two lines to write one more thing learned.

3. True or False, 1 page (1 dot): eight statements about producers and consumers from all seven passages.

4. Match It A, 1 page (2 dots): seven clues. Write the name from a box of nine (two are not answers).

5. Food Chain Order, 1 page (3 dots): six scrambled food chains of three or four cards. Write each one in order, first to last.

6. Fill It In, 2 pages (2 or 3 dots): Set A finishes six sentences; Set B finishes a short paragraph, each from a box of nine words (three are not used).

7. Cut and Paste, 3 pages (1, 2 or 3 dots): a block of 8 pieces that touch edge to edge, so cutting is a few straight lines. Paste 1 sorts producer from consumer; Paste 2 sorts herbivore from carnivore; Paste 3 sorts omnivore from herbivore.

8. Write About a Food Chain, 1 page (3 dots): pick a living thing, finish four sentences, draw its food chain in a big box.

One Role At A Time

Real animals eat many things. Each passage here gives one role and one food, and every item asks only about that, so there is a single right answer on every page. Every clue carries a second fact that only one passage has. The names in the box that are not answers (a whale, an oak tree) and the spare words in the fill-in boxes appear in no passage, so a child has to read to choose.

Built For The Child Holding The Page

A big "My name" line, one short instruction, large rounded type, big answer boxes, and dots (not words or colors) to show which level a page is. Nothing on a student page is written for an adult. There are no numbers, sizes or speeds in the passages: only what the living thing is, eats and what eats it. The file prints clean in black and white.

No Guessing The Answer

Wherever a child picks among printed choices (true or false, where a word sits in the box, the order of the pieces on the cut strip, which card in a food chain is first), the position of the right answer is checked so it does not sit in the same spot three times in a row.

Type In, Or Print

The name line and every answer box are type-in fields in any PDF reader: click one, type, then save. The same goes for the tracker, the class grid, the team note and the home page. This is a fillable PDF; it is not a Google Slides or PowerPoint file.

Who This Is For

Elementary classrooms, self-contained and resource rooms, and any teacher building a food chain or life-science unit into a center, a small group or a morning work folder. The sentences are short, and the teacher can read each page aloud.

What This Is, And What It Is Not

A producers and consumers worksheet set with the record-keeping around it. It is not a timed test, a screener, a clinical tool, or a claim about any student's age or rate of progress. There is no IEP goal language or eligibility wording anywhere in the file.