# Meadowkeepers — educator and co-play guide ## Purpose and prerequisites This short lesson invites a learner of roughly nine to explore a simplified temperate grassland. Age alone does not determine readiness. The learner should be comfortable making a choice and noticing larger/smaller values; an adult can read every prompt aloud and operate controls with them. No ecological vocabulary, typing or formal arithmetic is a prerequisite. Objectives: identify plants as producers and animals as consumers; explain why plants need both water and light; trace food energy from a plant through a herbivore to a predator; make and record a prediction before changing one condition; use the results to explain a repair. An unexpected prediction is an invitation to look again, not a failure. ## Suggested 10–15 minute lesson On the welcome screen, “See a one-step example” demonstrates two identical starting meadows with different water levels. Its before/after table is calculated by the same model as the activities. Replay it as often as useful, then enter the hands-on lesson. 1. **Observe and build, about 3–4 minutes.** Start with the healthy meadow. Identify grass and clover as producers, rabbits and field voles as plant-eating consumers, and the fox as a predator in this selected food web. Follow one food relationship. Remove a food source or change the number of groups, then inspect what changed. Assemble a habitat that supports the required organisms. Each control changes the model; organism pictures are not merely decorations. 2. **Predict and experiment, about 4–5 minutes.** Choose a starting scenario. Change water or sunlight while leaving the other condition alone. Record a prediction with the selectable control before advancing. Step the model and compare the plant-support result with the prediction. Read the explanation of the plant change, then trace the effect to animals. Repeat from the same scenario to compare another condition. Pause and single-step whenever a learner wants time to inspect an outcome. 3. **Restore and transfer, about 3–4 minutes.** Inspect a struggling meadow. Ask, “Which relationship seems to be short of something?” Choose a repair, run the model, and check the observed changes. A repair must produce improvement through the model; choosing an answer does not create a magical recovery. Try the fresh scenario, using the earlier food and resource relationships to explain the new choice. 4. **Reflect, about 1 minute.** Read the completion summary together. Ask the learner to finish: “When I changed ___, I noticed ___, because ___.” The summary describes practice completed, not a grade or scientific prediction. Stopping earlier and returning to a reset lesson is fine. Use the healthy example and hints as demonstrations. Wrong predictions and unsuccessful repairs allow unlimited retries. The lesson keeps progress only in memory; reset/replay or a page refresh starts over. Use the activity controls to revisit a task without reloading. ## Language and relationships A **producer** makes food using an energy source; these meadow plants use sunlight. **Consumers** obtain food by eating other organisms. A **herbivore** eats plants. A **predator** eats prey. Food-web arrows, where shown, point from food to the organism that receives its energy; they do not point in the direction of the hunter's movement. Water is a necessary plant resource, not a substitute for sunlight and not the energy source in this model. This meadow includes two selected plants, two selected herbivores and one selected predator. Rabbits and field voles eat plant material; foxes prey on both. Real foxes are opportunistic omnivores with a much broader diet. The restricted fox diet in this model is an explicit simplification, not a claim that foxes can eat only rabbits and voles. ## Adapting and co-playing - Reduce choice: start with the healthy example, change only water, and use single steps. Let the learner point while an adult operates the control. - Reduce reading: read short labels aloud and refer to the labelled organism cards and relationship diagram. All essential results also have written numbers and explanations, so colour is not required to interpret them. - Extend the challenge: repeat identical actions from the same starting state to test reproducibility; compare different starting scenarios; explain why improving plants may not immediately restore every consumer. - Support motor or visual access: use buttons and keyboard-operated controls rather than dragging. Increase browser zoom as needed. Motion is optional; there is no sound requirement or time pressure. - Encourage reasoning: ask what changed and why before selecting a repair. If the first repair does not help, follow the food relationship back one step instead of giving the learner a score. ## Model limitations A completed restoration field note records a repair that actually met the model's conditions. If the learner keeps experimenting, the current meadow can worsen again: the page distinguishes the earlier checkpoint from the current indicators. Reset clears both. All 0–100 support indicators and organism-group sizes are illustrative model values. They are not measured populations, probabilities, biomass, health assessments or a forecast. A model step is not a stated number of real days. Species deliberately use different coefficients to demonstrate that responses can differ; these coefficients are lesson design choices, not fitted ecological parameters. Exact equations and restart rules are documented in MODEL_NOTES.md. Real ecosystems include seasons, soil, shelter, nutrients, decomposers, many food alternatives, movement, disease and interactions not represented here. The small model excludes these factors to make one relationship at a time inspectable. Once a selected organism's support has reached zero, the model does not silently revive it; explicit habitat rebuilding is required. Adding organisms in a classroom model is not advice to release, move or feed wildlife. There is no claim of validated learning gains, diagnostic value, universal age suitability or a guaranteed real-world effect. Use observations from the model to ask questions about nature, not to plan ecological interventions. ## Content sources The following adult-facing references support the qualitative teaching content. They do not validate the numerical model. Accessed 14 September 2026. The learner does not need to follow external links. - **National Geographic Education, “Food Webs.”** https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/food-webs/ — supports producers, consumers, herbivores, predators and linked energy transfers. The lesson uses original short explanations and a much smaller model than a real food web. - **The Wildlife Trusts, “Field vole.”** https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/wildlife-explorer/mammals/field-vole — supports a grassland setting and a diet including seeds, roots and leaves. The model's grass/clover weighting is illustrative, not a measured dietary preference. - **Woodland Trust, “Fox (Vulpes vulpes).”** https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/animals/mammals/fox/ — supports rabbit and field vole prey relationships and the explicit reminder that real foxes have broader omnivorous diets. - **Royal Horticultural Society, “Clover in lawns.”** https://www.rhs.org.uk/weeds/clover-in-lawns — supports clover as a plausible component of a grassy, flower-rich habitat. No photographs, descriptive passages or numerical growth rates were copied. ## Offline follow-up Draw five cards: grass, clover, rabbit, field vole and fox. Add arrows showing selected food-to-consumer relationships. Place a sun and water symbol beside the plant cards. Ask what might change after a dry spell and name something the card model leaves out. Observe a local green space from a distance if convenient; do not touch, feed or relocate wildlife.