Skill: course-build → write-lesson, write-mcqs, write-video-script, sentence-atomise, review-figures (two cards opened on the render) @ 78ca9f9

James's notes on Topic 42 — triage (2 October 2026)

Source: reviews/james/NOTES_G3T42_2026-10-02.md (six sections: the intro, L01, L02, L03, L04, the summary). Topic 42 is not on video, so every change is a text edit to the module scripts, articles, items and figure briefs; nothing is committed. The general rules in his notes (connectives; if-then for a rule; "die" over "not survive"; one referent per "it"; never drop a word of a compound term; a scaffolded quiz for a many-term lesson) are the coordinator's to write to the vault.

In plain words

The intro is a beach at sunset with thousands of birds in one big group and a heron alone; it asks, in a full sentence, why so many birds live together but the heron lives on its own, stays with the heron to ask what it will do if a big storm damages its home, and then says James's topic sentence. The frozen beach and the rabbits are gone: 77 words, three question marks. L01 says each prairie dog can feed safely, while another watches for danger, drops the "keeping warm" repeat, and says "But some animals live alone and survive well." L02 opens on three cactus plants in different places (no more "three plants from one cactus"), says window sill, gives every step a subject, a verb and a connective ("so the cactus doesn't have enough light"; "And the bowl is far too wet for the cactus. So its roots rot, and it dies."), and its rule is the three if-then sentences. "Dies" replaces "does not survive" everywhere the sense is death — including the fixed option set, the chip and L02's title. L03's girl is Lily; the leaves on the maple tree are red; "Snow, a bare maple…" is a sentence; "That's called migrating"; the cranes question asks what the behaviour is called, over the three terms; and the quiz now opens with three recognition items (one per term) before the case sort, the claims and the typed recall. L04 loses "One change, three endings" and its drought-helps-the-grass example: the running change is now a storm that blows the big oak over — the oak dies, the squirrels move away, the little bushes in its shade get the sun and survive well. "Off the parking lot." The close is "So, here's what we've seen: …". The summary is his shape — his opener, each lesson's rule sentence, no examples, no "That's the whole topic", no end-of-strand wrap-up — 151 words.

The table

his note (verbatim)	action	where
intro: "don't think kids will know dusk? say sunset. and just say birds not starlings, kids won't know what a starling is. and say they are in a big group, not a cloud - a cloud is something that rains not a group of birds"	applied: "Here's a beach at sunset. Thousands of birds swirl together in one big group, while on the sand a single heron stands alone."	`content/G3T42.py` intro beat 1
intro: "'Why so many together' - needs a subject and verb - why are there so many starlings together, but the heron lives on its own?"	applied, his sentence with "birds" (his first note): "Why are there so many birds together, but the heron lives on its own?"	intro beat 2
intro: "'And in a month this beach will be frozen hard,' - sounds unrealistic - sandy beaches tend to be hot."	applied: the frozen-beach beat is cut	intro
intro: "instead, just stick with the heron, rather than changeing scene to rabbits. Say something like, and what will the heron do if there's a big storm that damages its home? or something like that"	applied: the rabbit beat is cut; "And what will the heron do if a big storm damages its home?" (dark clouds behind the heron on screen)	intro beat 3
intro: "then just go onto: This topic is all about how animals live together, and what they do when their environment changes."	applied verbatim as beat 4; the old "To find out, we will look at who survives…" line is gone; the ready line and the poll are unchanged. The blurb's last line now says the same sentence	intro beat 4; `blurb`
L01: "'So each one feeds in safety: staying safe.' - terrible sentence --> each dog can feed safely, while another watches for danger."	applied: "So each prairie dog can feed safely, while another watches for danger: staying safe." (script); "So each prairie dog can feed safely, while another watches for danger." (article). "Prairie dog" is kept whole — his own standing rule, never drop a word of a compound term, and a prairie dog is not a dog. "In safety" is gone from every student line in the topic ("feed safely", "peck safely", "graze safely": forest, table row, caption, fb)	`G3T42_lessons.py` L01 script beat 3, article, forest; `figures.py` GROUP_ROWS; L01 / summary / practice fb
L01: "'stay warm: keeping warm.' - delete keeping warm - unecessary repetition"	applied: script beat 5 "The bees in the middle stay warm."; the forest line likewise; the chip KEEPING WARM stays on screen	L01 script, forest
L01: "' Some animals live alone and survive well. ' - this needs a connective: But"	applied everywhere the sentence stands: the lexicon, L01's forest, rule and script, the summary, the `rule_groups` card (drawn text, alt, brief)	`G3T42.py` lexicon, summary; L01; `figures.py`
L02: "Here's Alistair with three plants from one cactus: a sunny sill, a shady corner, a bowl of water. - what do you mean? confusing --> Here are three cactus plants in different places: one by the window, one in a shady corner, and one in a bowl of water."	applied verbatim as the script's first beat; the article and headache open with the same words as two sentences (an idea line holds at most 22 words: "Here are three cactus plants in different places." / "One is by the window, one is in a shady corner, and one is in a bowl of water."). "All cut from one big cactus" and "He puts one on…" are gone; Alistair is no longer named in L02's text or captions (the boy in the two rendered cartoons stays, unnamed; the briefs keep him for the pipeline)	L02 headache, article, script; `figures.py` cactus cartoons' alt text
L02: "'sill' is not an appropriate word --> window sill is"	applied: "window sill" (two words) in every line, caption and table cell; "the sill cactus" → "the window sill cactus"; the places table's Place cell is two lines ("the sunny" / "window sill") so it fits its 130 px column (measured 68 of 130)	L02; `figures.py` PLACE_ROWS, `measure_report`
L02: "'only some of what it needs' -- verb and subject--> so the cactus doesn't have light: it survives poorly"	applied: script "The shady corner is dry but dark, so the cactus doesn't have enough light: it survives poorly."; article "The shady corner is dry, but dark, so the cactus doesn't have enough light." / "The corner gives the cactus only some of what it needs." / "So the cactus survives poorly there…" ("enough" added: a shady corner has some light; the rule's "only some of what it needs" is the point)	L02 script beat 5, article, forest
L02: "The bowl is far too wet. --> use a connective --> And The bowl is far too wet for the cactus. -- then use another connective to illustrate the result/causal link --> So it's roots rot and it does not survive." + "choose the positive 'die' rather than the negative 'not survive' - that's a general rule"	applied: "And the bowl is far too wet for the cactus. So its roots rot, and it dies." (script and article). Then the sweep: "does not survive" → "dies" in every student line where the sense is death (L02 forest, earthworm line, caption, fb and why ×9; practice seal ×4; PP-6's option; the summary). The fixed option set `PLACES` is now survives well / survives poorly / dies, the chip is DIES, and L02's title is "Survives well, survives poorly, or dies" — the verdict words are the rule's words. Kept: Sylvester's fb "does not survive well anywhere" (not death)	all three content files; `TYPES_G3T42.md`
L02: "'A place that gives a living thing everything it needs: it survives well.' this is not a proper sentence, it should be an if, then clause" / "if the place only gives the living thing some of what it needs, the living thing survives poorly. (and remember the rule about multiple 'it's in a sentence…" / "And if the place gives the living thing too little, or too much of what it needs, the living thing will die."	applied as three lexicon sentences, spoken as written in L02's rule, forest, script and the summary, and drawn on the `rule_places` card: "If a place gives a living thing everything it needs, the living thing survives well." / "If the place gives the living thing only some of what it needs, the living thing survives poorly." / "And if the place gives the living thing too little, or too much, of what it needs, the living thing dies." (present tense "dies", the topic's tense; the coordinator's condensed form). Every "it gives the cactus everything it needs" (two referents) is rewritten: "The window sill gives the cactus everything it needs."	`G3T42.py` lexicon, summary; L02 rule, forest, script; `figures.py` rule_places (text, alt, brief)
L03: "Iolanthe - this is an unnecessary complicated name"	applied: Lily (names tool: free; it is also an everyday noun, so the register will not list it — noted). Every line, caption, placeholder, alt and brief; grep for the old name: 0. The two rendered yard cartoons show an unnamed girl, so they stand	L03; `figures.py`
L03: "maple -- the leaves on the maple tree are red"	applied: headache, article, script beat 1 and the October caption ("In October, geese fly overhead, the leaves on the maple tree are red, and the groundhog eats by the fence.")	L03
L03: "Snow, a bare maple, no geese, no groundhog. - verbs?"	applied: "Snow covers the yard, the maple is bare, and the geese and groundhog are gone." (script); the January captions are sentences too	L03 script beat 2, captions
L03: "'That's migrating.' -- that's called migrating"	applied; and the two sister lines in the same shape: "That's called hibernating.", "A plant like that is called dormant."	L03 script beats 4–6
L03: "this question isn;t great - it should be '... this is called: (x) migrating ( ) hibernating ( ) going dormant"	applied: stem "Every fall, these cranes fly south to a warmer place with food, and every spring they fly back. What is this called?" over migrating / hibernating / going dormant (key 0; "this is called:" written as the question form the checker reads, S22); fb and why rewritten to name each term	L03 attached question
L03: "this lesson is slightly under-atomised I'd say… it's borderline, so maybe have the quiz be quite scaffolded, to make sure that you have the recognition MCQs first, before moving towards the recall ones."	applied: three recognition items open the quiz, one per term in the lesson's order — ducks → migrating (key 1), a chipmunk → hibernating (key 2), the lilac → dormant (key 0, moved up from q10) — then the six case-sort items, the two claims, the fox, and the two typed terms last. Quiz 12 → 14 items; `check_design` rewritten. Recorded, not done: James accepts the three-term lesson as borderline; Olivia may split it into three at her review, and he is happy with that	L03 quiz
L04: "One change, three endings. - delete - terrible - not a sentence"	applied: gone from the script, the forest and the caption ("One change gave three different endings." is gone too)	L04
L04: "Also, the drought helping the grass makes no sense - grass would surely die in a drought. maybe a different examples would be better"	applied: the running change is now a storm that blows the big oak in Benedict's park over, roots and all (the coordinator offered a flood or a fallen tree; the fallen tree is chosen — see Judgements). The oak dies (a tree cannot move, and its roots are out of the soil); the squirrels move away (a squirrel can run to another tree); the little bushes in the oak's shade stay and survive well (the sun reaches them all day, so they grow fast — true of plants released from shade). "The same storm harmed the oak and helped the bushes." The parking-lot example is unchanged. Figures: six keys renamed and redrawn/re-briefed (below); the blurb follows	L04 headache, forest, article, script, lesson_type; `figures.py`; `G3T42.py` blurb
L04: "'off the lot' - what is the lot'? do you mean parking lot? … parking lot, not just lot."	applied: "The pigeons eat crumbs off the parking lot, and survive well."	L04 script beat 9
L04: "'So, when a place changes quickly…' - i think this would benefit from a bit more than just so in this case, i.e. so, here's what we've seen..."	applied: "So, here's what we've seen: when a place changes quickly, some living things stay and survive well, some move away, and some die. The same change helps some living things and harms others."	L04 script beat 10
summary: "no - Here's everything we found out about how animals live together and cope with change."	applied verbatim	`G3T42.py` summary beat 1
summary: "delete the examples, as i've already said, they're not needed in the summary., so this should just be - living in a group helps an animal survive: staying safe, keeping warm, or getting food together. But some animals live alone and survive well."	applied verbatim (the prairie dog, wolf, bee and mountain lion lines cut)	summary beat 2
summary: "'Next, a place that gives a living thing everything it needs: it survives well.' 0- doesn't make sense, needs to be an if then clause. same for the other sentences…"	applied: the three if-then sentences as one beat, "Next, if a place gives…"	summary beat 3
summary: "'The geese fly south and back. The groundhog… The bison digs through the snow.' - again, delete the examples"	applied: cut; the winter rule stands alone	summary beat 4
summary: "' The drought killed the fish, and the grass spread over the mud. That's the whole topic: … And that's the end of our lessons on living things: …' delete - you don't need these examples, or the wrap up sentences"	applied: the drought line, "That's the whole topic…" and the end-of-strand wrap-up are cut; the quick-change rule and "The same change helps some living things and harms others." stand as one beat; "Okay, now your turn." last	summary beats 5–6

The new intro, in full (77 words, 3 question marks)

Here's a beach at sunset. Thousands of birds swirl together in one big group, while on the sand a single heron stands alone. → [the flock of birds over a beach at sunset; a heron alone at the water's edge; no title slide]
Why are there so many birds together, but the heron lives on its own? → [the flock, then the heron; a question mark]
And what will the heron do if a big storm damages its home? → [dark clouds roll in behind the heron; wind bends the grass on the dunes; a question mark]
This topic is all about how animals live together, and what they do when their environment changes. → [the beach at sunset again: the flock together, the heron alone]
Okay, so are you ready to find out who survives? → poll (Yes, let's go! / Not sure yet / Let me watch that again), unchanged

The new summary, in full (151 words)

Here's everything we found out about how animals live together and cope with change.
First, living in a group helps an animal survive: staying safe, keeping warm, or getting food together. But some animals live alone and survive well.
Next, if a place gives a living thing everything it needs, the living thing survives well. If the place gives the living thing only some of what it needs, the living thing survives poorly. And if the place gives the living thing too little, or too much, of what it needs, the living thing dies.
Then, when winter comes, some animals migrate, some hibernate, many plants go dormant, and some animals stay active in a thick winter coat.
And last, when a place changes quickly, some living things stay and survive well, some move away, and some die. The same change helps some living things and harms others.
Okay, now your turn. → the three attached questions, unchanged

The new L04 script, in full (150 words)

Here's the big oak in Benedict's park: squirrels in its branches, bushes in its shade.
Now a storm has blown the oak over, roots and all. What happens to the oak, the squirrels and the bushes?
A tree can't move, and its roots are out of the soil, so the oak dies.
A squirrel can run to another tree. The squirrels move away.
The bushes were in deep shade. Now the sun reaches them, so they grow fast: they stay and survive well.
Now consider a meadow. Builders cover it with a parking lot.
The flowers die. 8. The field mice move away. 9. The pigeons eat crumbs off the parking lot, and survive well.
So, here's what we've seen: when a place changes quickly, some living things stay and survive well, some move away, and some die. The same change helps some living things and harms others.
Okay, now your turn.

Judgements

The L04 replacement: a fallen oak, not a flood. Both of the coordinator's candidates are true and drawable. The flood was set aside because the topic's items already lean on floods (L04's attached question, the beaver-dam pair, the flooded wheat, the summary's river), so a flood lesson would make five items near-copies of its own teaching. A storm felling the oak collided with two items only, both re-instanced: the practice FRQ's squirrels became raccoons (same outcome, same reason), and PP-7 (the type sheet's "which living thing moves away") moved from a storm-flattened wood to lava covering a valley floor (the fir trees / the mountain goats / the mosses / the wild roses; key 1). TYPES_G3T42.md rows updated and re-rendered. The science: an oak blown over with its roots out of the soil dies; squirrels relocate; shrubs released from deep shade grow fast — all three are plain and true.
"Dies" reaches the option set, the chip and the title. James's rule names "die" as the positive word; the rule sentence now says "dies", and the topic's standing rule is that the verdict chips and options are the rule's own words. So PLACES is survives well / survives poorly / dies, the places-table chip is DIES, and L02's title follows. The register's atom title (LIF3-061 "…or does not survive") is the knowledge-graph's and is not touched here; flagged for the coordinator.
"Each dog" is written "each prairie dog". His sentence says "each dog"; his own standing rule (parking lot, never lot) says a compound term keeps every word, and a prairie dog is not a dog.
"Enough" light. His line says "doesn't have light"; the shady corner has some light, and the rule turns on "only some of what it needs", so the script says "doesn't have enough light".
The cranes stem is a question, "What is this called?", rather than a stem ending in a colon: the checker's S22 reads stems as questions and the course's items end in "?"; the options are his three.
L03's three new terms stay in one lesson, per his note; Olivia's possible split is recorded here and in BUILD_RECORD_G3T42.md, not done.
The intro's "environment" is his word (S36 lists it as unusual; kept). "Dusk", "starlings", "cloud" are gone.
Other hard-to-spell names in this topic (Josephine, Alistair, Benedict, Hyacinth, Bartholomew, Jerusha, Sylvester, Gwendolyn, Ferdinand, Mireille, Lucius, Bexley) were not in his notes and are not renamed; his 2 Oct rule (names a child can spell) would reach them all — a question for him before the bank is generated.
Script budgets. L01 150, L02 147, L03 145, L04 150 (≤150); intro 77 (≤120); summary 151 (≤175). L02's script lost its earthworm beats to hold the budget with his 54-word rule; the article keeps the earthworm. Captions that were noun strings ("January: snow, a bare maple…", "Two months later: fat and green; …", "The sill: survives well. …") are now sentences.
Checker: python3 build_tools_check_topic.py grade3/topic42_build/content/G3T42.py → 0 FAIL, 72 WARN (was 69: S36 unusual words 54, up by "environment", "fir", "raccoon(s)", "lilac" and down by "starlings", "dusk"; S38 fragments 0; S39 0; S33/S34 clean; S11 the type-sheet-only bank; S10 "happens" shared by L04's stems, as before). Names tool run (Lily free; old name grepped: 0). Table guard: every cell inside its column (worst "only some of what it needs" 160 of 190). Renders opened at 1080 px: rule_places (six lines fit the box), rule_change, change_table_oak, storm_strip. Page rebuilt: course_preview/topic42/index.html (26 generated pictures still wired). Not committed; nobody messaged; no other topic touched.

Figures owed to the image session

key	why	what to render
`oak_june_cartoon`	new (replaces `pond_june_cartoon`, whose 1 Oct render is superseded)	Benedict in a park in June beside a big oak in full leaf; two grey squirrels in its branches; small green bushes in deep shade under it; bright sun on the grass beyond
`oak_july_cartoon`	new (replaces `pond_august_cartoon`, superseded)	the same corner in July: the oak on the ground, roots in the air with soil hanging; no squirrels; the bushes in bright sun; Benedict looking
`photo_fallen_oak_bushes`	new (replaces `photo_pond_cracked`, superseded)	a real oak blown over by a storm, root plate up, sunlight on green bushes beside where it stood
`yard_october_cartoon`, `yard_january_cartoon`	no retake — the girl is unnamed in the picture; briefs now say Lily	—
`cactus_three_cartoon`, `cactus_after_cartoon`	no retake — the boy is unnamed in the student text now; the picture stands	—
the four SVG tables and cards (`places_table_`, `rule_places`, `storm_strip`, `change_table_oak_`, `rule_change`, `rule_groups`)	drawn by code; already redrawn	—

2 Oct, later — Lily → Grace

The names tool reported Lily free because it drops capitalised words that are also common nouns; Lily is a child in Topics 1 and 2. Topic 42's child is now Grace (free by the fixed tool). Tool fixed the same day.