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Topic 38 "Plant parts and their jobs" — your read (29 September 2026)

The Life strand's seventh topic. Four lessons on the three parts a Grade 3 student names — roots, stem, leaves — and the job each does. Each opens on a child's puzzle: a dandelion that will not come out of the ground; a sunflower taller than a boy with no bones; celery whose leaves turn red overnight in red water; a leaf that comes out pale from under a piece of foil. The surprising members come first — a carrot is a root, a tree trunk is a stem, pine needles are leaves — and the everyday member joins last. Topic 32's sentences stand word for word ("plants make their own food in their leaves, using sunlight and water"; "the roots take in water; they do not eat the soil"); nothing on the flower (Topic 37) or on growing toward the light (Topic 39). A non-author review found four blocks and thirty smaller points; every row is adjudicated in the build record and the fixes are on the page. A cold reader then answered the 34 changed items blind and agreed with every key (two wording flags — a second way a plant could fall flat, and "beetroot" for "beet" — fixed). The page · Blueprint · Type sheet

The four that unblock the bank

1. Does LIF3-022 "what the stem does" become two atoms?

The register gives the stem two jobs in one line — it holds the plant up; it carries water from the roots to the leaves — and they have two different demonstrations (the snapped sunflower; the celery in red water), two different quiz moves and two rule sentences. Authored as L02 and L03, each under 150 spoken words. Merged, one demonstration goes. The reviewer agrees. The proposal

Recommendation: split — LIF3-022 keeps "holds the plant up"; new LIF3-P02 takes "carries water from the roots to the leaves" with the celery as its example.

Split / keep one atom and merge L02 and L03

2. Do the nine question types stand, with the typed hard tier — and is the "what happens when a part is cut, bitten, covered or pulled out" form the tenth? (29 Sep, your Matter-review rulings applied: the pale-leaf typed item is now a medium MCQ — "food" was a true typed answer, so the question was not closed; only the stem-from-its-two-jobs item stays typed. Six of nine claim items are retagged fluency; Sander's, Marlon's and Casimira's carry their source. Details in the build record's 29 Sep sweep section.)

Your night ruling is applied: hard is typed — a part named from its two jobs with no other part in the stem ("holds the plant up and carries water from the bottom of the plant to the top"; type "stem"), and the thing a leaf under a paper bag was missing (type "sunlight"). Easy and medium are four-option MCQs on roots / stem / leaves / flower and are the bulk. Every atom is tested alone and in a pair; every exemplar is a scene the topic uses nowhere else (the reviewer caught three that were quiz or practice items with a noun changed and a key cued by the stem's word — a cucumber on a fence, a split-stem carnation half red and half blue, and four one-frame job options now replace them). The quizzes already carry a two-step form the sheet does not: roots in the air, the flattened corn, the bitten stem, the leaf in the dark. Ten is your ceiling.

Recommendation: approve the nine and add the consequence form as type 10, medium, one exemplar written after you rule.

Approve all nine / strike these / edit these · Add type 10 / leave at nine

3. Is "the flower" the fourth option on the which-part items?

A bank MCQ needs four options and the topic teaches three parts. The flower is Topic 37's part, met the lesson before, and sits fourth in a fixed bottom-to-top order. The reviewer's caveat: an option that is never the key in fifty items becomes one students learn to skip.

Recommendation: yes, the flower — and let two or three bank items key on it through a Topic 37 retrieval in the same frame ("Which part is where the seeds are made?"), so the option stays live and the cluster is tested the way your coverage rule asks.

Flower, never the key / flower, two or three items keyed on it / a different fourth option

4. Three surprising members left out on purpose: a potato, a cactus's spines, an onion's layers. Agreed?

Each fails the very job its atom states — a potato holds nothing up and carries water to no leaf a child can see; spines and onion layers make no food. Teaching them here would show "a member that breaks the rule" inside a lesson whose whole point is the rule. The reviewer adds: bar "sweet potato" too (a root a child cannot tell from a potato), so the bank never asks it.

Recommendation: leave them out; the bars go in the atoms' cross fields.

Leave out / add one with a "some leaves do other jobs" line

The lessons

5. L01 The roots hold the plant in the ground — Leonie tugs a dandelion; it will not come; out it comes with a long white root and soil clinging to it. The root was gripping the soil: that grip held the dandelion in the ground. A carrot plant pulled up — the orange carrot is its root. A tree in a storm: the wind pushes all night and the tree stays, because its roots spread wide under the ground. A bean seedling's thread roots last. The roots' other job is Topic 32's: they take in water from the soil; they do not eat the soil. Rule: a plant's roots hold it in the ground, and they take in water from the soil. Quiz: a typed Topic 32 recall first; a goat and a thorn bush; radishes (which part are the red parts); Sander's "roots eat the soil" (no); Meike's "roots only hold" (no); roots in the air, roots in wet soil; the grass roots' job; a fallen tree (which job the roots did); Torvald's true claim (yes); the word by recall. Eleven items.

Approve / edit

6. L02 The stem holds the plant up — Anton's sunflower stands taller than he does on one thin green stem; it has no bones, so what holds it up? Its stem does. A tree's thick brown trunk holds up every branch and leaf: a tree trunk is a stem, a very big one. A bean plant on a windowsill. Then the one honest non-example: the same sunflower after a windy night, its stem snapped and its head on the grass — nothing holds it up anymore (drawn as a cartoon, the pair to the opening one). Rule: a plant's stem holds it up. Quiz: what a rose bush's stems are doing; tulips standing in a vase; Odile's "just a stick" (no); a palm's stem; corn lying flat after a storm (which part snapped); a cut daisy (can the top stay up — no); Ansel's "a trunk is a stem" (yes); the tomato stem's job; the word by recall. Ten items.

Approve / edit

7. L03 The stem carries water from the roots to the leaves — Marisa stands celery in a glass of red water; next morning the leaves have red lines. She cuts the stick across: a ring of little red dots inside. The red water climbed up inside the stem. The shop celery has no roots, so the water went in at the cut end; a whole plant works the same way from its roots — the roots take in water, the stem carries it up to the leaves (the register plant with blue arrows up the stem). A tall tree's trunk carries water to the highest leaf. Rule: a plant's stem carries water from the roots to the leaves. Quiz: a watered rose; a white daisy in blue water; the three parts in the water's order (a reorder item); Marlon's "leaves get their water from rain" (no); a caterpillar bites through the stem near its top (which part goes without water); a cut flower in a vase (can its stem still carry water — yes); which way the water travels; a typed close. Ten items.

Approve / edit

8. L04 The leaves make the plant's food — Jonas wraps one leaf of his bean plant in foil; two weeks later it is pale yellow and the others are dark green. Topic 32's sentence: a plant makes its own food in its leaves, using sunlight and water; the Sun's light lands on the leaves, the water comes up the stem. Under the foil no light landed on that leaf: with no light it could not make food, and with no light it lost its green (the reviewer's accuracy pass: the colour follows from the missing light, not from the missing food — the chain is written that way everywhere now). Pine needles are leaves; a lettuce is a bunch of leaves. Rule as Topic 32's sentence. Closes the topic: roots take in the water, the stem carries it up, the leaves use it with sunlight to make the food — the full job table. Quiz: an apple tree; a lawn; Delfina's "leaves are decoration" (no); parsley in a dark cupboard (what happens to its leaves); Ruairi's true claim (yes); a cabbage (which part); the other thing a leaf uses, typed (before any option prints it); holly in winter; can roots make food in the dark soil (no); the maple's leaves' job; the word by recall. Twelve items.

Approve / edit

Applied without asking

Hard bank items typed; every attached question standing alone on its own drawing (four lessons, three on the summary; key string 0 1 1 2 0 1 2); no verdict-and-reason options; every stem a positive question; colour in the figures; scene changes spoken with "let's"; the intro on a ready line and a poll, naming no lesson; quiz scenes different from the lessons'; a headache child never in an item; each claim-maker once; term-recall items last; a payoff with a semicolon authored as two lessons; the roots' halo drawn where it shows; placeholders that print no description on item figures; alt and screen-reader text that never names the part an item asks for; a staging imperative ("Pull it up") rewritten as a scene; every changed figure opened as a rendered PNG.

Also on the site

After you answer

The bank fills to about fifty from the approved types (types 1, 2 and 5 varying scene kind, not only the plant); the second cold read if you want one; the hand-over folder for David (31 picture briefs, five videos); Grade 4's plant atoms take the split from here.