After you have read your students The Lorax, you can do this food chain lesson. First, ask students which plants and animals in the Lorax's world are affected by the Once-ler's thneed factory?
You should make the following list on the board. The animals and plants can be listed in any order for the beginning of this lesson plan:
- TRUFFULA TREES--cut down to make thneeds
- BROWN BAR-BA-LOOTS--used to eat truffula fruit, had to leave to find food
- SWOMEE-SWANS--can't sing because of factory smog, flew away
- HUMMING-FISH--can't swim in their pond because of factory pollution, had to leave to find fresh water
- THE LORAX--left because all that remained was an empty factory and smog--no more truffula trees
The best example of a food chain lesson in The Lorax is the truffula trees and the brown bar-ba-loots. The brown bar-ba-loots eat the fruit from the truffula trees. To make this more of a chain, ask students to make up a creature that might eat the brown bar-ba-loots, such as a truffula tiger, and then write this on the board:
TRUFFULA TIGER-->BROWN BAR-BA-LOOTS-->TRUFFULA TREE FRUIT
Then discuss with students what will happen to the brown bar-ba-loots once the truffula trees are gone and there is no more fruit? (They leave to find food--this happens in the book.) Then ask students: "What will happen to the truffula tigers?" Students should answer that these animals might also have to leave because they can not find food if the brown bar-ba-loots leave.
In this food chain lesson, you will also want to discuss with students reasons why animals may have to leave a habitat or why a food chain is broken. For example, in The Lorax, the humming-fish have to find another pond because theirs is too polluted. Thinking about a food chain, what animals might be affected by this move? The students can make up animals since Dr. Seuss does not mention this, but basically their answers should reflect that animals that eat the fish will have to find new food or leave also.
