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James's notes on Topic 33 — triage (2 October 2026)
Source: reviews/james/NOTES_G3T33_2026-10-02.md. Six notes (the intro, L01–L04, the summary). None of this topic's videos exists, so every change is a text edit; nothing is committed.
In plain words
The intro asks about a dog and a sunflower, not a fish and a fern (the blurb follows). "Need" is a verb throughout — "it needs food" — and the noun is no longer coined: the lexicon sentence, the terms entry, L01's "What a need is" section and the two "need" term items are gone, and every "X is a need / not a need" line now says "it needs X / it does not need X". L02's glass bottle is deleted. L03 says the fish takes in oxygen from the water through its gills, so the whale, which has no gills, comes up for air. L04's pet fish on the carpet is deleted (article, script, forest, the Fabio quiz item, the place card). The summary opens "Here's everything we found out about what living things need".
The table
| his note (verbatim) | action | where |
|---|---|---|
| "a fish is a silly example cos obviously it needs water - change to a dog. also, maybe you can use a more recognisable plant than a fern, e.g. a sunflower" | applied: intro beat 5 "And would a dog, a sunflower, or you, stay alive here?" and its cue; blurb "a hamster, a sunflower in a pot, and the teacher's dog asleep by the door… nobody feeds a sunflower. And what does the dog need that the sunflower does not?" | content/G3T33.py intro, blurb |
| "we don't need to define 'a need' as a noun - we can just use it a a verb throughout, and say it needs X Y or Z" | applied: lexicon line and terms["need"] removed; L01 section "No food" ends "So the parakeet needs food."; "Needing and wanting": "So Teodor wants the game, but he does not need it. A living thing needs only the things it cannot stay alive without."; script beat 3 "The parakeet cannot stay alive without food. So the parakeet needs food."; the recognition and typed "need" items cut from L01's quiz and the practice set; every "is a need / not a need" fb and why in L01, L04, the practice set and the bank rewritten with the verb; the two typed PP items now ask "Type the missing thing" / "Type the thing it needs" | G3T33.py, G3T33_lessons.py |
| "delete the non-example here: A glass bottle in the desert needs no water. It's not a living thing. -- non examples tend to work best when its a more minimal difference…" | applied: forest, article (subtitle and four lines), script beat and the two figures (bottle_photo, need_card_bottle) removed from the page and the briefs. Vault: new 10 Rules/A non-example is a near miss, never an absurd case.md; write-example-sequence line | L02; figures.py; vault |
| "i think you need to specify that fish take in oxygen through their gills. then it makes more sense when we say: but whales don't have gills, so they need to come up to get their oxygen from the air" | applied: lexicon "A fish needs air too: it takes in oxygen from the water through its gills."; forest, article ("On each side of the fish's head are gills. Through its gills, the fish takes in oxygen from the water."; "A whale has no gills, so it cannot take in oxygen from the water."), rule line, script ("Yes, they do. A little air is mixed into the water. On each side of the fish's head are gills…"; "It has no gills, so it comes up, breathes in, and dives again"), every fb/why (shark, Zuzu, the river fish, the tank pump, the sea turtle, the perch, the dolphin bank item); figures need_card_fish (note "oxygen through its gills"), needs_air_run, rule_air and their briefs, rendered and opened | L03; G3T33.py; figures.py |
| "'A pet fish needs water, not the carpet.' - this is a silly example - too obvious, just delete it" | applied: deleted from forest, article (four lines and the place card), script; Fabio's quiz claim deleted (same example); needs_place_run is four cards; place_card_fish out of the page and briefs | L04; figures.py |
| "I'd just go straight into: Here's everything we found out about what living things need" | applied; the summary re-cut 229 → 175 words. Vault: new 50 Decisions/A summary video opens with here is everything we found out about the topic.md | G3T33.py summary; vault |
Judgements
- A seam to know about: Topic 35 L05 coins "gills" by their look (your note there), and Topic 33 now uses the word first, located plainly ("on each side of the fish's head"). Topic 33 does not add it to its terms, so no recall of "gills" is asked before Topic 35. Say if you would rather Topic 33 said "through the slits on each side of its head" and left the word to Topic 35.
- "oxygen" is used as a plain word (James's words); S36 did not flag it.
- Scripts: L01 145, L02 135, L03 145, L04 145; summary 175 (the aloe and penguin examples shortened, the toy bird kept as the one not-alive case now that the bottle is gone).
- Checker: 0 FAIL, 48 WARN (S36 words already answered in the readability sweep;
cosima,kasia,ragnarare names). Page rebuilt.