Science and Technology K–6 · Years 3–4

Who lives in leaf litter? A funnel survey and a food web

Science understanding: Biological sciences

PracticalMedium risk

School laboratory, not for home

In a school laboratory, with a teacher supervising, under the school's risk assessment. Not for home.

The idea

A handful of leaf litter holds consumers and decomposers that depend on the producers above it, the trees that dropped the leaves, and sorting what lives there by what it eats builds a real food web from the school grounds.

Safety card

Medium riskA teacher supervises

Setting: In a school laboratory, with a teacher supervising, under the school's risk assessment. Not for home.

Hazards

spider bite, including a juvenile funnel-web small enough to pass the 5 mm mesh into the jar
lamp heat
soil organisms

Controls

an adult collects the litter wearing gloves (funnel-web and redback spiders shelter in litter)
the adult tips out the jar and checks the tray for spiders before learners sort
no handling of spiders or centipedes
brushes not fingers
the lamp stands on a stable base, clear of paper, with the globe 20 cm above the funnel, and it is switched off whenever the room is left, so it is never on unattended or overnight
wash hands
animals returned alive the same day the jar is emptied

Note

Risk assessment before the lesson using Primary RiskAssess or the school's own template.

What you need

2 L of leaf litter and topsoil from under trees in the school grounds, collected by an adult wearing gloves with a trowel (permission from the school)
a large funnel or a 2 L bottle cut to make one, with a piece of 5 mm mesh across the neck
a desk lamp with a filament globe of 25 to 40 W (incandescent or halogen) held 20 cm above the funnel: the extraction works by the globe's radiant heat and the drying it causes, and an LED globe of the same brightness gives almost none
a jar with a little damp paper towel under the funnel
hand lenses, white trays, soft paintbrushes
an invertebrate identification chart for eastern Australia

How to do it

Put the litter loosely in the funnel over the mesh and stand it over the jar.
Switch on the lamp above the litter while the room is in use and switch it off whenever the room is left, so no globe burns unattended or overnight. Over two or three days the top of the litter dries and the animals move down away from the heat and drying and drop into the jar. A run of only a few hours collects few animals, and where only LED globes are available, stand the funnel in a warm dry place with no lamp and allow three to four days.
Tip the jar contents onto a white tray and sort with a paintbrush. Count and identify each kind with the chart.
Record a table: animal, number found, what it eats (leaves, dead matter, other animals).
Draw a food web with arrows from food to eater, starting from the tree leaves, and mark each animal as consumer or decomposer.
Return every animal to the litter and the litter to where it came from on the day the jar is emptied.

What you should see

Slaters, millipedes and springtails (decomposers eating dead leaves) are expected to outnumber predators such as centipedes and spiders, giving the web a wide base and a narrow top. The counts, not a published list, are the result; the web must show at least one producer (the tree), several consumers and the decomposers that close the loop.

What changes

What you change: the place the litter came from (shaded garden bed or bare edge), if compared
What you measure: number and kinds of animals found
What you keep the same: litter volume
lamp time
funnel

Common misconceptions

Each of these ideas is wrong, and the activity is a chance to test it.

Dead leaves are rubbish with nothing living in them.
Food chains start with the biggest animal.
Decomposers are not part of food chains.

Curriculum references

The NSW syllabus outcomes and Australian Curriculum v9 codes this activity supports. They are references, not a verified or complete curriculum alignment.

Science and Technology K-6 Syllabus (2017), current, taught until 2026; code read from the syllabus document on 22 September 2026ST2-4LW-S ST2-1WS-S
Science and Technology K-6 Syllabus (2024), implemented from 2027; NESA's timeline is 2026 plan and prepare and 2027 start teaching, and schools may choose to implement it during 2026; code read from the outcomes page on 22 September 2026ST2-DAT-01
Australian Curriculum v9AC9S4U01AC9S3I03AC9S4I04AC9S4I06

Sources

The pages the author read to write this activity.

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