Skill: course-build → write-lesson, write-mcqs, sentence-atomise @ fb2b865

James's notes on Topic 41 — triage (2 October 2026)

Source: reviews/james/NOTES_G3T41_2026-10-02.md (five sections: the intro, L01, L02, L03, the summary). Topic 41 is not on video, so every change is a text edit to the module scripts, articles and items; nothing is committed.

In plain words

The intro is now James's own story: a fox on some grass that does not eat the grass, yet loses its food when the grass dies, because the rabbit it eats ate the grass. No more "a fox can't live on grass" (it walks on grass all day). L01 says the leaves use the sunlight to make food, and its quiz now tests the two atoms it teaches one at a time: eight items on "every food chain starts with the Sun", three on "what a food chain is" (which list IS a food chain, then the term recognised, then the term typed). L02 opens on "Uri's poster of a food chain" and says "The arrow means 'is eaten by'". L03 opens on the meadow, THEN the same meadow a year later, so the screen shows the two side by side. The word "eater" is gone from every student line in the topic: "nothing eats the grass now", "the arrow points from the food to the animal that eats it". The summary opens "Here's everything we found out about food chains", drops the moose, the herring and Uri, asks "what happens if you take one living thing out of a food chain?" and answers with the rabbits and the grass, and loses its "That's the whole topic" tail: 145 words.

The table

his note (verbatim)	action	where
"A fox can't live on grass: - yes it can - it walks around on grass all the time. What you mean is a fox can't eat grass to survive, so say that. You need to be very cautious of double meanings."	applied: the phrase is gone from the intro, the blurb ("A fox does not eat grass. Yet if all the grass died, the fox would lose its food.") and L01's article ("The fox does not eat grass. But its line of food starts with the Sun…")	`content/G3T41.py` intro_script, blurb; `G3T41_lessons.py` L01 article
"also, the whole premise is a bit convoluted -- simpify? Here's a fox on some grass. It doesn't it the grass. But if all the grass died, the fox would lose its food. How? Well, look at what the fox eats - a rabbit. And the rabbit eats grass. So, if the grass dies, so do the rabbits. Then the fox has no food! And thats what this topic is all about - who eats who, and how animals and plants are connected in a food chain. Okay, so are you ready to follow the food?"	applied in his words and order (below): 88 words, 2 question marks, one scene, no "is called", the ready line and the poll unchanged. His "How?" is spoken as "How can that be?" (S38: every sentence has a verb); "who eats who" is written "who eats whom" (the topic's existing form)	`content/G3T41.py` intro_script
L01: "The leaves make food. --> the leaves use the sunlight to make food."	applied in the script beat ("The Sun's light lands on the leaves. The leaves use the sunlight to make food. The moose eats the leaves."), the forest line and the `chain_moose` caption; beat 2 trimmed to "A leaf never eats. It makes its own food." so the script stays at 150 words	L01 script, forest, article caption
L01: "you're teaching two atoms in this lesson: 1. What is a food chain 2. all food chains start with the sun. I think that's okay in this case, cos we want to tie those two atoms together, but just make sure you test those things discretely in the quiz"	applied: the quiz is marked in two blocks (a comment names each atom's items); atom (A), the Sun, had eight items (q3–q10); atom (B), what a food chain is, had only the two term items (recognise, type), which ask for the NAME from the definition. One concept item added before them, asking the other way round — "Which of these is a food chain?" over "a water plant, a beetle that eats the plant, and a frog that eats the beetle" / "a frog, a toad and a lizard, which all eat beetles" / "a frog, a pond and the mud at the bottom of the pond" (key 0; the three-option letter counts become 0 3 2 2 → q11 adds one key at position 0). Quiz 12 → 13 items; recognition before recall kept (concept → term recognised → term typed, all last)	L01 quiz
L02: "Here's Uri's poster of a food chain"	applied in the headache, the article's first line and the script's first beat	L02 headache, article, script
L02: "'Read it as 'is eaten by'.' --> change this to: The arrow means 'is eaten by'"	applied everywhere the sentence stood: the lexicon, L02's forest, article idea line, rule line, script beats 3 and 7, the `rule_arrow` card (drawn text, alt and image brief), the practice item's fb and why, the summary. The article's three "Read it: the grass is eaten by the rabbit." lines became "This arrow means: the grass is eaten by the rabbit." (same construction he struck)	`G3T41.py` lexicon, PRACTICE, summary; L02; `figures.py` rule_arrow
L03: "Here's the meadow a year later. --> you need to first start: Here's a meadow. And now, here's the same meadow a year later. --> that's what allows you to show the compariosn on screen"	applied: headache and article open "Here's a meadow. Rabbits nibble the grass, and a fox watches from the edge." with the existing `meadow_photo` (one depiction per thing — L01's meadow), then "And now, here's the same meadow a year later. A new fence runs round it." with Tillie's cartoon; the script's first two beats are the same two sentences with a two-panel screen direction (left: the meadow photo; right: the same meadow a year later; the right panel then grows)	L03 headache, article, script
L03: "'eater' is a silly word. Just say 'nothing eats the grass now' or 'nothing eats the rabbits now'"	applied across the whole topic's student text (grep for "eater" in student strings: 0). His two sentences used as written in L03's forest, article and script; the arrow rule becomes "the arrow points from the food to the animal that eats it" (lexicon, L02, rule card, practice, summary, PP-3's sister lines); the removal rule's middle sentence becomes "Now nothing eats the thing it ate, so there is more of it." (L03 rule line, script, `rule_remove` card and brief); every fb/why with "no eater" / "lost its eater" / "is the eater" rewritten with "nothing eats the X now" or "so the Y eats the X" (L02 ×6, L03 ×9, practice ×3, PP100 ×2, L03's attached question)	all three content files
L03: "i guess you will introduce the terms prey and predator in g4 or 5?"	not applied here — a register question for the coordinator (the topic's binding note already keeps predator / prey for Grade 4's LIF4-020…022); no term added	—
summary: "Here's everything we found out about the Sun, the plant and the animals that eat. --> no --> here's everything we found out about food chains."	applied	`G3T41.py` summary beat 1
summary: "'The moose eats leaves. The herring eats shrimp that ate tiny floating plants.' - cut these examples, not needed for a summary"	applied: beat 4 is the lexicon sentence alone, "An animal cannot make its own food, so it eats."	summary beat 4
summary: "'Uri's arrows pointed the other way, and they said the fox is eaten by the rabbit. That never happens.' similarly - delete"	applied: beat deleted	summary
summary: "this is fine though, but i'd start it with 'Then, what happens if you take one thing out of the food chain?' well... and then talk in specific, e.g. take out a rabbit, more grass grows, but the foxes go hungry. But take out the grass, and the rabbits go hungry, and then the foxes go hungry too cos they run out of rabbits to eat!"	applied: "Then, what happens if you take one living thing out of a food chain? Well, take out the rabbits. Nothing eats the grass now, so more grass grows. But the foxes have lost their food, so they go hungry." then "Now take out the grass instead. The rabbits go hungry. Then the foxes go hungry too, because they run out of rabbits to eat." ("one living thing", the topic's noun, so the lexicon sentence is still spoken; "cos" written "because")	summary beats 7–8
summary: "'That's the whole topic: the Sun, then a plant, then the eaters, each arrow pointing to the next.' - delete generic lines like this which add no value - general rule"	applied: deleted. The general rule is the coordinator's to write to the vault	summary

The new intro, in full

Here's a fox on some grass. It does not eat the grass. → [the cartoon: a fox standing in long grass in a meadow, the Sun low behind it; no title slide]
But if all the grass died, the fox would lose its food. How can that be? → [the grass turns brown; the fox looks thin; a question mark]
Well, look at what the fox eats: a rabbit. And the rabbit eats grass. → [a rabbit appears between the fox and the grass; the rabbit nibbles the grass]
So, if the grass dies, so do the rabbits. Then the fox has no food! → [the grass turns brown; the rabbit fades; the fox looks thin]
And that's what this topic is all about: who eats whom, and how animals and plants are connected in a food chain. → [the grass, the rabbit and the fox in a row; chip WHO EATS WHOM]
Okay, so are you ready to follow the food? → poll (Yes, let's go! / Not sure yet / Let me watch that again)

88 words, 2 question marks.

The new summary, in full (145 words)

Here's everything we found out about food chains.
First, every food chain starts with the Sun.
The Sun's light carries energy to a plant, and the plant makes its food.
An animal cannot make its own food, so it eats.
Next, in a food chain drawing, the arrow points from the food to the animal that eats it.
The arrow means 'is eaten by'. The grass is eaten by the rabbit. The rabbit is eaten by the fox.
Then, what happens if you take one living thing out of a food chain? Well, take out the rabbits. Nothing eats the grass now, so more grass grows. But the foxes have lost their food, so they go hungry.
Now take out the grass instead. The rabbits go hungry. Then the foxes go hungry too, because they run out of rabbits to eat.
Okay, now your turn. → the three attached questions, unchanged.

Judgements

The lexicon lost two sentences. "The thing it ate has no eater now, so there is more of it." and "The thing that ate it has lost its food, so it goes hungry." were lexicon lines the summary had to restate. James ruled the summary speaks the removal in specifics, so the lexicon now holds only "Take one living thing out of a food chain, and its neighbors change."; the two sub-sentences stay in L03's rule line, script and rule card (the first reworded without "eater"). No S15 lexicon WARN.
"so do the rabbits." The topic's own note had kept death off the page ("living things go hungry"). James wrote "if the grass dies, so do the rabbits" for the intro, so the intro says it; every lesson and item still says "goes hungry".
"food chain" in the intro. He wrote "connected in a food chain"; the intro checker only fails "is called / are called", and S12's forward-reference sweep reads lessons, not the intro. Kept as he wrote it; nothing is coined.
L03's two-panel opener reuses L01's meadow_photo as the "before" picture rather than a new drawing (one depiction per thing); the "after" is Tillie's cartoon, its caption now "The same meadow a year later…". The script's screen field carries the side-by-side.
Script budgets. "The animal that eats it" is four words longer than "the eater", so L02 was trimmed back to 150 ("point the other way. Which way is right?", "Now read Uri's arrow… point the wrong way", "Now here's a garden chain", "and the rabbit to the grass"); L03's opener added a beat, so it was trimmed to 149 ("Take the rabbits out.", "Now imagine the foxes are gone.", "then the foxes do too", "Rabbits nibble grass"); L01 150. Two fb lines that went over 30 words were shortened.
Checker: python3 build_tools_check_topic.py grade3/topic41_build/content/G3T41.py → 0 FAIL, 41 WARN (was 42; all pre-existing kinds — S36 unusual words 35 → 34, S38 fragments 0, S39 0). Names tool: no new character names. rule_arrow and rule_remove cards re-drawn from their new lines (the longest line, 59 characters at 14 px bold, sits inside the 560 px card). Page rebuilt: course_preview/topic41/index.html. Not committed; nobody messaged; no other topic touched.