Topic 38 "What happens when a place changes": your read (2 October 2026)

Two readers answered 115 items cold and agreed every key (no MCQ disagreement; the typed "water" and "fossils" on the lists; the written answer matched its model). Every fossil item read one way, every extinct / rare / alive case landed in one bin, and no key rewarded a kind changing by trying. What they flagged was shape and surface, all applied in v2: one lives-on sort with no "still suits" clause; two bank items where three options said "extinct…" and one said "not extinct"; two items whose key was the only sea or only land thing; "bones" and "the sea" as honest typed answers; one stem that named hunting; four runs of one key letter; Tori and Travis read as one child, and Tori wrong every time; two weak extinct sorts that "rare" tempted; one wrong idea offered twice; a stem that stated the definition it asked for; three items leaning on outside knowledge (palms, sharks, what rabbits eat).

Reader C then read the whole v2 bundle, 115 items, and agreed every key; no key was spottable by length, by a lone joining word, or by its shape. Three soft edges and a note, all applied in v3, keys unchanged: one bank stem said "thousands" alive with "rare" on offer (now "many thousands"); the typed "fossils" item had to take "bones" (it does, verified); one practice item rested on "dormant" being a plant's word (it is, verified); and Travis was wrong in seven of eight lines (his L01 claim is now true). Reader C also named two give-away pairs in the bank, now draw constraints.

The science is right and in the right order, the reviewer said, and every key holds; what was wrong was two promises not kept and a handful of lines a child would read the wrong way. The register asks the intro and the summary to say that the seasons shift a life cycle's timing from place to place: neither did, and the record's claim that the blurb did was false. The L04 video never said "a kind cannot change its features by trying", yet two quiz items test it; the L03 video never said "rare", yet the sort set needs it. All four are fixed. Worth fixing, all done: the Grade 3 fossil rule quoted word for word; Topic 21's layer rule recalled before the two-layer cliff; "adapted" coined after its case, not before; "the kind moved north" glossed before it is said; the mammoth in the past tense; "rare" explained before it is labelled; an intro scene that could really happen (Travis in Florida for winter break, on a video call); polar bears "in the far north", not "only near Alaska"; the cliff items' stems shortened so the drawing does the work; wider accept lists; one retag; one key tell. Left as they were, on the reviewer's word: "the dinosaurs are extinct"; the mammoth's end told as place change; "warm all year" for alligators; the passenger pigeon's cause unsaid (question 4 above). Facts checked true: blossom dates, Hell Creek alligator relatives, Minnesota's mammoth, musk ox and bison fossils, the extinction dates, the counts. The reviewer answered the author's three questions as the page above shows.

What a student notices first is the two January cards: a bare brown tree on white snow under a grey-blue sky beside a round green tree on green grass under a pale yellow sky, the same month on both, neither drawn as better. Three fixes before the cold read, all made: the climate chips sat on top of the trees (the card is taller and the chip sits between the title and the sky, with a pond strip drawn); the alligator strip was drawn but placed nowhere (now after the Montana lines); the three item cliffs did no work because the stems printed every layer (the stems now say "Here is a cliff"). The page pass found text in the wide figures reading at 5 to 6 px on a phone: the cards, strips, rule cards and the decision card were redrawn narrower so their words read at 13 px or more in a phone column; two comparison tables could not be, and the record names the builder fix (a tap-to-zoom) that would. Minor: a pond named in a note but not drawn (drawn now), an alt richer than its cells (trimmed), "dark rock" for a grey fern fossil (grey), the eye-first line added to every picture brief.

51 items in content/G4T38_pp100_bank.py: 48 four-option MCQs and 3 typed words (water, fossils, extinct). Per atom: LIF4-045 12 · LIF4-050 13 · LIF4-051 13 · LIF4-052 13. Easy 17, medium 20, hard 14, sorted easy to hard and rising with the atom's place in the topic. MCQ keys A 12 · B 15 · C 12 · D 9. Sixteen question types, one exemplar each on the type sheet: a place's winter climate given, what a living thing looks like in January; a January scene given, which climate; which of two places has the milder winter; the reason two life-cycle steps come two months apart; a fossil and its need given, what the place was; which fossil shows a place was warm, or damp and shady; what a fossil tells and what has changed since; a drawn cliff read first-to-later; the one thing a fish needs, typed; the evidence given, extinct / rare / migrating / hibernating; a child's claim is wrong, pick the reason; what an extinct kind is known from, typed; a kind's features and a change given, lives on / moves / extinct / grows new features; two kinds against one change, one pond against the kind; the word for a kind whose features suit its place; the coined word typed from a fresh description. Every scene is fresh against the lessons, quizzes and practice (the scene-noun grep is in the build record), and the type sheet's v3 section lists the draw constraints on the built bank, including Reader C's two pairs.

Skill: course-build → write-lesson (four lessons: a fact comparison; a fossil routine; a classification coining 'extinct' last; the adapt-or-extinct capstone coining 'adapted' first) → write-example-sequence, design-check-sequence, sentence-atomise, write-explanation, write-mcqs (quizzes, attached questions, practice, the PP100 bank and its type sheet); write-video-script (intro, four scripts, summary); review-figures (author self-check; the non-author pass is owed) @ efd8fba

Grade 4 Topic 38 — What happens when a place changes — build record (v1, 2 October 2026)

What this is, in plain words

Four short lessons, one per atom, closing the Living things lessons and Grade 4. A child first sees the same January in two places — Valeria's grandma in Minnesota has snow, a bare maple and a frozen pond; her grandma in Florida has a green live oak and a heron wading — and learns that a place's climate decides how its winter looks (L01). Next, Travis finds sea shell shapes in rock on a dry Texas hill two hundred miles from the sea, and the lesson runs Grade 3's fossil rule one step further: the kind the fossil shows could stay alive only where it had what it needed, so back then the place had that — the hill was under the sea; a fern print means damp and shady; alligator bones in Montana mean warm all year; and Topic 21's layer rule puts two pasts in order (L02). Then the class stands under a mammoth skeleton and asks where a living one can be seen: nowhere — every one has died, no living one is left anywhere on Earth, and the kind is known only from its fossils; the bald eagle (rare once, not gone) and the horseshoe crab (a fossil kind still alive) are the near misses; the word extinct arrives last (L03). Last, the capstone: the land that is Minnesota today warmed after the ice age, and of three kinds that grazed its cold grassland the bison lived on (its features still suited the place: adapted), the musk ox moved north (the far north was still cold), and the mammoth died out (no cold open grassland was left) — and a kind cannot change its features by trying (L04). Dying out is said plainly, once per kind; nothing frightening is pictured or said.

Counts (v1 — superseded by the v2 section below; the v1 article counts were also misreported: the checker measured 325 / 356 / 372 / 488, not 323 / 356 / 373 / 488). 4 lessons · 4 scripts (148, 142, 141, 149 spoken words) + intro (119 words, 2 question marks) + summary (171 words, opens "Here's everything we found out about what happens when a place changes.") · 4 attached questions + the intro's poll + 3 summary questions (key string in video order A B B A A B B, B 4 of 7) · 43 quiz items (10 + 10 + 11 + 12) · 14 practice items (13 MCQ, 1 written answer; three Grade 3 retrievals and one Topic 25 retrieval; "extinct" and "adapted" recognised then recalled by MCQ; L04 opens with a Topic 36 recall) · PP100 bank 51 items (49 four-option MCQs, 2 typed; LIF4-045 12, LIF4-050 13, LIF4-051 13, LIF4-052 13; easy 16, medium 22, hard 13; MCQ keys A 12 · B 13 · C 13 · D 11) · 35 figures (19 SVG by code, 12 photo placeholders, 4 cartoon placeholders) · articles 323 / 356 / 373 / 488 words (every WARN above 300 answered below) · checker 0 FAIL, 49 WARN (every WARN is an S36 word, each answered below) · check_g4_articles.py 0 FAIL · check_svg_ids.py PASS (0 ids) · names register exit 0 · page builds (/tmp/g4t38.html: 4 lessons, 14 practice, 51 pp100, 35 figures) and all eleven routes screenshotted and looked at · blind bundle cut (111 MCQ, 2 typed, 1 written) · video batch built, check_brief.py clean except the INTRO's standing R79 hit, grep -ci strand 0 · NOT sent.

Decisions made without a blueprint

One line each, with the reason:

• Four lessons, one per atom, in register order — the row names four atoms and the capstone closes the topic; each payoff is one clause.
• No Living things opening video and no strand-closing material — Topic 33 carries the opening; the architecture names a static end-of-Living-things test and an end-of-grade test after Topic 38 and asks for neither in this topic's build (checked: Card 2's row and the totals line; nothing in the register's exports asks for a closing lesson).
• L01 is examples only — a fact true of every place; the Forces log leaves the non-example out when none sits at the boundary; Travis's claim ("every place has snow in January") carries the misconception instead.
• L01's climate recall is Topic 25's sentence word for word and the Grade 3 words migrate / hibernate / dormant are used, not re-taught (one recall item, one line each).
• L01 carries the register's life-cycle link (JM 2026-09-25: the seasons change the cycle's timing from place to place) as its own subtitle and table — orange trees in Florida flower in March, apple trees in Minnesota in May. (v1 claimed the blurb said it and the summary did not; the review found the blurb did NOT say it either. v2: the blurb, the intro's map line and the summary now each carry the link — see the v2 section.)
• L02 recalls Grade 3 Topic 27's rule word for word, then adds one step — the NEED (Grade 3 Topic 33's "Every living thing needs a place that suits it", word for word) — because the register runs LIF3-061's matching backwards in time; without the new step the lesson would re-teach Grade 3.
• L02's third case is alligator bones in Montana, not palm leaves in snow — Grade 3 Topic 27 L05 already used palm leaves in snow; an alligator is a US animal every child knows, and alligator relatives really are found in Montana's Hell Creek rocks.
• L02 keeps the Topic 21 link as a short last section — the architecture puts Topic 21 before Topic 38 for this reason; the Kansas cliff uses Topic 21's cliff drawer (imported, never redrawn) and recalls its rule in one line and one item.
• L03 coins "extinct" last, after five cases and the sort table — explain then label; the sorting sentence "A kind with only a few left is rare, not gone." is written before any check sorts the rare case (vault: a boundary case gets its sorting sentence).
• L03's two near misses are the two catalogued beliefs — the bald eagle (extinct means rare / far away) and the horseshoe crab (every fossil kind is dead); a third belief (people and dinosaurs together) is one plain line and one item.
• "The dinosaurs" are said to be extinct, as the register words it — birds as living dinosaurs is grade 6-8's; the simplification is named below.
• L04 coins "adapted" FIRST — the register's cross note: "Lesson opens by saying what adapting means before any prediction"; it is a describing word for a kind whose features suit its place, never a verb a kind performs, so the Lamarck / teleology trap has no foothold in the lesson's own wording.
• L04's one change with three verdicts is the end of the ice age in the land that is Minnesota today — woolly mammoths, musk oxen and bison all left fossils there; the bison lived on, the musk ox lives only in the far north today, the mammoth is extinct — one real place, the three branches of the rule.
• L04 says the mammoth died out because its place changed, and does not mention hunting — nothing frightening, and the atom's behaviour is the place-change verdict; the simplification is named below.
• "Moves" is kept as the rule's middle branch (the brief's and LIF3-063's word) and the article says what it means for a kind: "the musk oxen in the warm places died, and the musk oxen in the cold north lived on, so the kind moved north" — the kind did not plan the move.
• Every lesson gets a video — L01 needs the two places seen side by side; L02 is a routine a child should watch run; L03 needs the skeleton and the sort table; L04 is the capstone.
• The intro is one scene (Travis in Florida video-calls Tori in Minnesota) with one felt question and the shell on his shelf as the big picture; it does not reuse L01's two grandmas and coins nothing.
• Both coined words are in RECALL_BY_MCQ, on the brief's word; the typed keys are "water" and "fossils" — see Questions for James.

Grade 3 and earlier Grade 4 doorways, recalled by one item and one line each, never re-taught: Topic 25 ("The weather a place usually has, year after year, is called its climate.") — L01's first idea line, L01-q1, PR-4; Grade 3 Topic 42 ("When winter comes, some animals migrate, some hibernate, many plants go dormant…"; "When a place changes quickly, some living things stay and survive well, some move away, and some die.") — L01's dormant / migrated lines, L01-q2, L04's first idea line, L04-q1, PR-1, PR-3; Grade 3 Topic 27 ("A fossil shows what lived in a place long ago. Compare it with where that living thing lives today. That is an idea about what the place was like back then."; "A fossil is a part of a living thing from long ago, or a mark it made, that has lasted until today") — L02's three recall lines, L02-q1, PR-2; Grade 3 Topic 33 ("Every living thing needs a place that suits it.") — L02's need line; Topic 21 ("A fossil is about as old as the rock layer it sits in") — L02's cliff lines, L02-q2, L02-q7, PR-7. Topic 36 ("A trait a living thing had from the start, from its parents, is called an inherited trait.") landed during this build — L04's "features" are joined to that word by one recap line ("These features are inherited traits: a trait a living thing had from the start, from its parents, is called an inherited trait.") and one recall item (L04-q2, a bear cub's thick fur), word for word; "features" stays the lesson's working word because the brief and the register's cross note use it and the rule sentence is about a KIND, not one animal's traits. Topic 37 (pollination, germination, complete change, gradual growth, chrysalis) is not leaned on.

The simplifications, named: "the dinosaurs are extinct" (birds descend from dinosaurs; grade 6-8's); "the last mammoth died about four thousand years ago" (Wrangel Island; "about" is said); "the musk ox moved north" for a range that shrank as the southern animals died; the mammoth's dying out told as the place changing (people also hunted mammoths; not said); "the last dinosaurs died about sixty-six million years ago, long, long before any person lived" (the number is in the article and one item, with its unit word). No note is printed in the article.

Questions for James (the build does not wait on them)

• Should "extinct" be typed in the practice and the bank's hard tier, rather than recalled by MCQ? Context: the brief for this topic put the coined words in RECALL_BY_MCQ; "extinct" is seven letters, spellable with the near-miss grader (extinkt, exstinct). Recommendation: type it — a typed "extinct" is the bank's natural hard item for LIF4-051. Built as the brief asked (MCQ recall in L03-q11, PR-14, PP-28 / PP-30); flipping is one RECALL_BY_MCQ edit plus two items. "adapted" stays by MCQ either way (its sisters are the point).
• Does L04 (468 words) stand as one lesson, or should "What adapted means" split off as its own short lesson before the three-kinds prediction? Context: the register asks the lesson to say what adapting means before any prediction, so the coin and the capstone sit together; the article's longest run without a subtitle or figure is six lines; a split would give LIF4-052 two lessons. Recommendation: keep as one — the coin is three lines and the three kinds need it on the same page. Built as one.
• Is "alligator bones in Montana" the right third fossil case, or would James rather keep to plants (palm leaves) as Grade 3 did? Context: alligator relatives really are found in Montana's rocks; the lesson says "an alligator can stay alive only where it is warm all year". Recommendation: keep — a US animal every child knows, and it varies the kind (animal after plant). Built with it.

Design-check-sequence records

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Skill: design-check-sequence @ efd8fba

Part: L01 (LIF4-045)

Type: (a) one-step fact — a place's winter climate is given, and one living thing's January state follows.

Plan: recall climate (3 opt, 1) → recall migrating (3 opt, 0) → North Dakota pond (A) → southern Texas trees (B) → Vermont frog (B) → Louisiana butterfly yes (A) → Travis's claim no (B) → Georgia apple tree first (A) → the goose's January place (B) → the why: two climates (3 opt, 0). Two-option string A B B A B A B; three-option 1 0 0.

Belongs in practice/test instead: the four-state sets; which-place-from-the-scene; the reason items; the two-class count (PP types 1–4).

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Skill: design-check-sequence @ efd8fba

Part: L02 (LIF4-050)

Type: (b) multi-step routine — name the kind, say where it can stay alive, so say what the place was.

Plan: recall fossil (3 opt, 2) → recall the deeper fossil is older (A) → scaffold on a SECOND case, the Ohio sea star: where it can stay alive (3 opt, 1) → so what Ohio was (3 opt, 2) → bare: New Mexico moss (3 opt, 0) → bare: Wyoming palms (3 opt, 1) → the drawn two-layer apply item, shells below tree roots (A) → Tori's claim: the sea is near Kansas today (B) → Travis's claim: fish lived on mountain tops (B) → Valeria's TRUE claim: Alabama under the sea (A). Three-option 2 1 2 0 1; two-option A A B B A. The worked case (Texas shells) is on the page, so the scaffold sits on a second case and the bare items on fresh ones (vault: Scaffolded first, then bare).

Belongs in practice/test instead: the four-place set; the "what it tells us" statements; the three-layer drawn cliffs; the typed need (PP types 5–8).

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Skill: design-check-sequence @ efd8fba

Part: L03 (LIF4-051)

Type: (a) one-step categorisation — given the evidence, is the kind gone forever (extinct) or not.

Plan: Carolina parakeet, every one has died (A) → polar bear, gone forever? no (B) → the TERM recognition among rare / extinct / migrating (3 opt, 1) → red wolf extinct? no (B) → great auk extinct? yes (A) → Travis's claim: penguins extinct because none live here, no (B) → Tori's claim: every fossil kind alive somewhere, no (B) → Travis's TRUE claim: the alligator is not extinct (A) → Tori's claim: people hunted Tyrannosaurus, no (B) → the Costa Rica frog, extinct (A) → the recall MCQ keyed on extinct (4 opt, 1). Two-option string A B B A B B A B A (5 of 9 at B). The recognition item sits before any stem says "extinct".

Belongs in practice/test instead: the four sisters as a set; the reason items on the three beliefs; the typed "fossils" (PP types 9–11).

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Skill: design-check-sequence @ efd8fba

Part: L04 (LIF4-052)

Type: (c) concept understanding — a prediction with a because-clause, and three named beliefs (adapt by trying; the kind chooses; extinct = one place's loss).

Plan: recall stay / move / die, a frog hops to the river (3 opt, 1) → recall inherited trait, a bear cub's fur (A) → the TERM recognition, the beaver (3 opt, 0) → WHAT: desert lizard lives on (A) → WHAT: cold-lake fish extinct (B) → WHAT: pine-seed bird moves (3 opt, 2) → WHY: the snail's valley (3 opt, 1) → Travis's claim: each bird grows a bigger beak because it needs one, no (B) → Tori's claim: the deer chose to move, no (B) → Valeria's TRUE claim: the goose lives on (A) → TRANSFER: the shaded-stream frog (3 opt, 1) → the recall MCQ keyed on adapted (4 opt, 2). Two-option A A B B B A; three-option 1 0 2 1 1. The why sits on a fresh case (the snail), not the what items' cases (the coordinator's fresh-instance form).

Belongs in practice/test instead: the four-outcome set; two kinds against one change; one pond against the kind; the reason items; the term from a fresh description (PP types 12–15).

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The key strings

• Attached questions in video order (L01, L02, L03, L04, summary ×3): A B B A A B B (B 4 of 7, 57 %).
• L01 quiz: two-option A B B A B A B; three-option 1 0 0. L02: two-option A A B B A; three-option 2 1 2 0 1. L03: two-option A B B A B B A B A; three-option 1; four-option 1. L04: two-option A A B B B A; three-option 1 0 2 1 1; four-option 2.
• Practice: three-option 0 2 0 2 0; two-option A B A A B B; four-option 0 3.
• PP100 MCQ keys: A 12 · B 13 · C 13 · D 11 (49 MCQs); typed 2. Difficulty order easy → medium → hard holds (S11); per atom: 045 easy 8 / medium 4; 050 easy 5 / medium 6 / hard 2; 051 easy 3 / medium 6 / hard 4; 052 medium 6 / hard 7 (S31 clean).

The example sequences, written out

• L01 (fact form, one frame): "In Minnesota, winter is cold with snow, so the maple dropped every leaf in the fall and is dormant all winter." / "In Florida, winter is mild, so the live oak keeps its green leaves all winter." / "In Minnesota, the pond freezes, so the geese flew south in the fall: they migrated." / "In Florida, the pond stays open all winter, so the heron wades in it all winter." / "In Minnesota, the butterflies are gone in January…" / "In Florida, flowers still bloom in January, so some butterflies still fly." Then the table (the comparison lined up), the spring-timing pair, the rule.
• L02 (routine, one frame): "The fossil shows sea shells. Sea animals can stay alive only under the sea. So back then this place was under the sea." / "…a fern print. A fern can stay alive only where it is damp and shady. So back then that place was damp and shady." / "…alligator bones. An alligator can stay alive only where it is warm all year. So back then Montana was warm all year." Each case has its strip (three panels, arrows), then the cases table.
• L03 (classification, E E E NE NE): mammoth (no living one anywhere: gone) → dinosaurs (gone) → passenger pigeon (gone, though common not long ago) → bald eagle (rare once; some were left; not gone) → horseshoe crab (a fossil kind; still crawls onto beaches; not gone) → the sort table with the question written above the marks → the coin → the split restatement ("The mammoth, the dinosaurs and the passenger pigeon are extinct." / "The bald eagle and the horseshoe crab are not extinct.").
• L04 (one change, three kinds): bison (eats grass, stands heat and cold; grass still grew; yes → lived on: adapted) → musk ox (needs cold all year; no, but the far north was still cold → moved north) → mammoth (needs cold open grassland; no, and none was left near → every one died: extinct) → the kinds table → the decision card.

The rules applied

Misconceptions confronted, by name

The physics catalogue is silent on Life beliefs; the sources below are the literature named in the item's source field.

Checker result, every WARN answered

python3 build_tools_check_topic.py grade4/topic38_build/content/G4T38.py → 0 FAIL, 49 WARN; every WARN is an S36 readability word (S36-COUNTS unusual_words=49). Also printed: S35 typed_long 0 · S37 strand 0 · S29 units 0 · S39 0 · S30 typed 2, fail 0, warn 0 (one S30-INFO: PP-39's "water" closed by the author's note) · S38 fragments 0. check_g4_articles.py → 0 FAIL; its four article-length WARNs are answered under "Judgement calls".

S36 words, one line each (fine = a word a nine-year-old meets, with its plain gloss on the page; swap = changed):

• mammoth ×36, mammoths ×7, tusks ×7, skeleton ×5, museum ×5 — fine: the lesson's thing, glossed ("an animal like an elephant, with thick fur and long curved tusks"); museum and skeleton are everyday words for this age.
• rare ×36 — fine: the sort's second label, defined on the page ("A kind with only a few left is rare, not gone.").
• mild ×31, milder ×2 — fine: Topic 25's word for a winter that is "cool, but with no snow", glossed in L01.
• musk ×13 — fine: part of the compound name "musk ox", the lesson's third kind, pictured.
• bald ×9 — fine: "bald eagle", the national bird, pictured.
• auk ×8 — fine in a quiz stem that says "a big seabird"; ask James if he would rather another extinct bird (the Labrador duck is already in the bank).
• dire ×7 — fine: "dire wolf", one bank item, the kind named in full.
• polar ×6 — fine: "polar bear".
• whooping ×6, cranes ×4, crane ×2, condors ×2, condor ×2 — fine: real rare US birds, each named in full with "a tall white bird" / "a big bird".
• beaver ×5, beavers ×1, arctic ×5 (arctic fox), caribou ×3, antelope ×4, coral ×3, sloth ×3 (giant ground sloth), mastodon ×4, rhino ×5 (woolly rhino), salamander ×5, parakeet ×3 (Carolina parakeet), heath ×4 (heath hen), magnolia ×2 — fine: US animals and plants a child meets in books and zoos; each stem says what the thing is where the name alone would not.
• wades ×4, wading ×1, wade ×1 — fine: the heron's verb; "wades in the pond" is literal.
• wolves ×4, zoos ×4, zoo ×2, jungle ×2, burrow ×2, forecast ×2, central ×2, grassy ×3, drier ×3, hooves ×1, slim ×1, spiky ×1, tropical ×1, monarch ×1 — fine: everyday words.
• Swapped on the checker's own note: "creek" → "river" (L04-q1, James: say "river"); "ginkgo" → "redwood"; "upstate" → "northern"; "pika" → "a kind of rabbit with thick fur"; "monarchs" → "monarch butterflies"; "drought" → "a long dry summer"; "marshy" → "wet".

Bank freshness, re-performed

Scene nouns of the lessons, quizzes, attached and summary items: grandma, maple, live oak, heron, pond, geese, monarch butterflies, orange tree, apple tree, Minnesota, Florida, Vermont, North Dakota, southern Texas, southern Louisiana, Georgia / Michigan, South Carolina / Maine; Texas hill, sea shells, fern print, Pennsylvania cliff, alligator bones, Montana, Kansas cliff, Ohio sea star, New Mexico moss, Wyoming palms, Colorado mountain fish, Alabama sea turtle, Nevada desert fish; museum, skeleton, tusks, mammoth, dinosaurs / Tyrannosaurus, passenger pigeon, bald eagle, horseshoe crab, Carolina parakeet, polar bear, red wolf, great auk, penguins, Florida alligators, Costa Rica frog, saber-toothed cat; Minnesota grassland, musk ox, bison, beaver, desert lizard, cold mountain lake fish, pine-seed bird, snail's valley, seed-eating bird's beak, cool-forest deer, goose, shaded-stream frog, arctic fox, one-lake fish, Maine / California towns, Utah fern, one-forest beetle. Practice: Indiana bats, Arizona footprint, filled-in pond snails, Seattle, southern Georgia / Alaska, Oklahoma sea urchin, Nebraska cliff, Florida panther, woolly rhino, salamander, crow, turtle's lake, pale lizard, parrot.

Grep of the bank and the practice set for each lesson noun (word-bounded, lower case): zero hits for grandma, maple (the one bank "maple" was re-scened to a birch), heron, live oak, Minnesota, Florida (practice's two hits are the Florida panther's name), geese, monarch, orange tree, apple tree, Texas, hill, Pennsylvania, alligator, Kansas (the one bank hit was re-scened to Missouri), museum, skeleton, tusk, mammoth, passenger pigeon, bald eagle, horseshoe crab, musk ox, bison. Remaining hits, each judged: "Montana" ×3 (a January town and the robins' fall — winter scenes, not the alligator case); "dinosaur" ×3 (PP-43's Stegosaurus, a hard claim; "the dinosaurs" are the register's example); "grassland" ×1 (a mouse's grassland warming, not the mammoth's); "South Carolina" ×2, "Georgia" ×3, "Colorado" ×2, "Alabama" ×4 (states reused for different scenes: cherry trees, frog eggs, a butterfly count, Georgia ponds — scene kind differs from the quiz's apple trees, live oaks and the Alabama sea turtle); "snail" ×3 (quiz: a snail's valley dries — the why item; practice: pond snails — a Grade 3 recall; bank: none after the marsh snail became a tiny fish); "lizard" ×2 (practice's term item on a pale sand lizard against the quiz's heat-hiding desert lizard — different move, the term from a description); "deer" ×1 (a deer footprint as a fossil option). Re-scened during this pass: PP-8 (live oak → magnolia; maple → birch), PP-24 (sea shells on a Tennessee mountain → shark teeth), PP-25 (a crocodile-like animal → big tropical leaves), PP-40 (Kansas → Missouri), PP-46 (marsh snail → tiny fish), L02-q7 (the lesson's own Kansas cliff, shells below a fern print → shells below tree roots).

Blind-text grep

grep "[Drawing:" blind/2026-10-02/*.md | grep -iE "extinct|adapt|forest|gone|suits" → 0 hits. grep -iE "\bsea\b" → 3 hits, all the same phrase: "cream shell rock with sea shells" — Topic 21's data word for the fossil drawn (the kind), which the stem itself names ("sea shells sit in the bottom layer"); the key of each item is an ORDER ("under the sea first, then a forest") or a first state, which the drawing line does not state. Judged not a hand-over; a reviewer who disagrees can rename Topic 21's FOSSIL_WORD "sea shells" → "fan shells" in that shared drawer, which this topic does not edit.

Figures (author self-check on the renders; the non-author review-figures pass is owed)

All 35 figures rendered to /tmp/g4t38_figs/*.png at 530 px and read on nine contact sheets; the three fossil strips, two tables and the season table re-rendered after their fix. Checked on the render: the two place cards (bare brown tree on white snow under a gray-blue sky; green round-crowned tree on green grass under a pale yellow sky; the headache form has no climate chip, the teaching form has COLD, SNOWY WINTER / MILD WINTER); the season and spring tables (every cell inside its column, title above); the three strips (three cards, two arrows, the third header "So back then this place was" fully inside the frame after the fix; the shell, fern and bone icons are Grade 3 Topic 27's); the fossil cases table (shortened cells read at phone width); the Kansas cliff (Topic 21's drawer, numbers 1 and 2 from the bottom, shells in the cream band, a fern in the gray band); the gone-forever card (the question above a red cross in a pale red box; "No. Every one of this kind has died."; "known only from its fossils"); the extinct sort table (the question written above the marks; three red crosses, two green ticks; "gone / not gone"); the decision card (the YES branch green, the NO branch to a second question, its YES yellow "moves", its NO red "every one of the kind dies, the kind is extinct"); the kinds table (shortened cells); the three rule cards (the rule word for word, first line bold); the three item cliffs (no numbers, fossils as drawn, blind text data only). Placeholders: 12 photo and 4 cartoon boxes with their grey notes inside the frame. Nothing mislabelled, nothing out of frame after the fix. The page screenshots (/tmp/g4t38_shots/) show every figure inline under its caption, no empty box, no case collision.

Names run

python3 build_tools_names.py Bauer Tori Travis Valeria → Bauer free · Tori free · Travis free · Valeria free · exit 0. No other name is used (Grandma is a role word; Miss Bauer is the teacher). "Miss", never "Mr." or "Ms.".

Sentence-atomise self-check (one table per paragraph, collapsed to the rows that changed)

Scripts: every beat one or two sentences (the two rule beats that ran to three and four sentences were split into two beats each); every on-screen chip spoken on its word; "Here's…" opens each; "And now…", "Now consider…", "But now consider…" bridge the cases; the rule spoken last, word for word; "Okay, now your turn." Intro: 119 words, two question marks, "To find out, we will look at…", the ready line and the poll. Summary: 171 words, the opener James set, one lead-in word per rule, no example re-told.

Judgement calls

• Article lengths 323 / 356 / 373 / 488 words (the local checker WARNs above 300). Every article has a subtitle or a figure at least every six idea lines (S16 clean). L01 carries the register's life-cycle timing link as its own section (23 words) on James's 25 Sep note; L02 carries Grade 3's rule word for word (24 words), the need step, three cases and the Topic 21 link; L03 carries five cases because the two near misses are the two catalogued beliefs; L04 is the capstone with the recall, the coin, three kinds, two figures and the named misconception — a split is put to James above. Kept; a reviewer who wants a cut should start at L03's dinosaur section (three lines) and L04's "a kind cannot change by trying" (four lines, but it is the misconception James asked to confront by name).
• "The dinosaurs" said to be extinct. The register's own example wording; birds as living dinosaurs is grade 6-8's. Named above.
• The horseshoe crab as "a fossil kind still alive". Its fossils are of close relatives, hundreds of millions of years old; "fossils of horseshoe crabs" is the fit-for-purpose wording at this grade.
• The alligator-in-Montana case. Alligatoroid fossils (Brachychampsa) are in Montana's Hell Creek rocks; "alligator bones" and "an alligator-like animal" are both true enough; the article says "alligator bones" for the child, the bank says "crocodile-like" nowhere now (re-scened to tropical leaves).
• The musk ox "moved north". The register's and the brief's word; the article says what it means for a kind (the southern animals died; the northern ones lived on); musk oxen live in Alaska today (reintroduced) and across the Arctic — "the far north" is true.
• Two typed items only, both on non-coined words ("water" with a closed note; "fossils", a lexicon word), because the brief put both coined words in RECALL_BY_MCQ; the hard tier is otherwise well-made MCQs with an hb line each (James, 29 Sep: hard means harder, not typed).
• Fixed sets whitelisted from the longest-option check: the climate set (PP-4, PP-7) and the outcome set (PP-33, PP-38); every other key was equalised by lengthening its distractors.
• "Nowhere." as Miss Bauer's reply. Kept in the article inside its quoted sentence ("Miss Bauer says: 'Nowhere.'" — the verb is before the colon); the script says "Miss Bauer says there is nowhere."
• The blind text's "sea shells". Judged data (the fossil kind the stem names), not a key — see above.
• "Features" kept as L04's working word beside Topic 36's "inherited trait". The recap line and the recall item join the two; switching every "features" to "traits" would make the rule sentence read as one animal's traits rather than a kind's, and the brief's wording is "features". James may prefer "traits" throughout — one find-and-replace plus the lexicon line.

Owed

• The non-author passes: review-figures over the 19 SVG renders and the 16 placeholders' notes; review-questions over the 42 quiz items, 14 practice items and 51 bank items (the design-move inventory is on the type sheet); review-accuracy on the real-thing claims (alligator relatives in Montana; woolly mammoth, musk ox and bison fossils in Minnesota; the last mammoth about four thousand years ago; the passenger pigeon's 1914 Cincinnati death; the great auk 1844; the Carolina parakeet 1918; the heath hen 1932; the Labrador duck 1878; the golden toad 1989; about thirty wild red wolves; about five hundred California condors; about eight hundred whooping cranes; about two hundred Florida panthers; redwood fossils; horseshoe crab fossils; orange trees flowering in March in Florida; apple trees in May in Minnesota; alligators in Florida; sea otters once very few).
• The blind read on blind/2026-10-02/BLIND_BUNDLE_G4T38.md (two cold readers; keys in KEYS_SEQUESTERED_G4T38.json); the adjudication.
• The video batch at handoff/G4T38/videos/batch_G4T38.json with its READY.md — NOT sent; James's review of the scripts is the cue.
• The picture pass (12 photo and 4 cartoon placeholders through David's pack) — waits for James's sign-off on the three questions above, per the 2 Oct sequencing rule.

v2 — reviews applied (2 October 2026)

Skill: course-build → write-lesson (lesson lines; write-video-script for the beats) · write-mcqs (every item change; its key-tell checker) · write-explanation (fb and why lines) · review-figures (author re-render after the drawer changes) @ e23b67f

In plain words. The three reviews found the science right and every key sound; what they found wrong was two promises not kept (the register's spring-timing link was in neither the intro nor the summary, and the L04 video never spoke the misconception its quiz tests), a girl whose name two cold readers confused with Travis's, three cliff items whose stems did the drawing's job, and a dozen lines a child would read the wrong way. All of that is fixed in place. The one girl is now Kayla; she gets the TRUE claim in L02 (Alabama was under the sea) and Valeria takes the Kansas claim. "extinct" is typed in the bank's hard tier. L04 stays one lesson, with L04-q3 and L04-q4 sitting in the article between its two parts. The figures that must be read on a phone were redrawn narrower so their words read at 13 px or more in a 344-px column, except the wide tables (recorded below).

The new name. Tori → Kayla (grep of grade4/ grade3/ demos/ reviews/ for Kayla before the rename: 0 files; python3 build_tools_names.py Bauer Kayla Travis Valeria → Bauer free · Kayla free · Travis free · Valeria free · exit 0; grep for the OLD name in grade4/topic38_build/content/, handoff/G4T38/videos/, the type sheet's bar list and the v2 bundle → 0; grade4/NAMES_POOL.md row 38 updated). Kayla is a different initial from Travis and Valeria and a name a nine-year-old spells.

#### Finding → change

#### Checker lines (after every change)

• build_tools_check_topic.py → 0 FAIL, 48 WARN: 47 are S36 words (the v1 list, minus the words that left with the rewrites, plus steller ×3 — fine: "Steller's sea cow", named in the stem as "a huge sea animal"); the one other WARN is S34 "term 'extinct' has no recall (a typed item keyed on it) in the topic's quizzes or practice" — answered: the coordinator ruled "extinct" typed in the BANK's hard tier only (PP-44), with L03-q11 and PR-14 kept as MCQ recall; S34 reads quizzes and practice, not the bank.
• check_g4_articles.py → 0 FAIL: articles 325 / 380 / 369 / 519 (L02 grew by Topic 21's rule and the alligator strip; L04 by the case-before-coin lines and the musk-ox gloss — the coordinator kept L04 as one lesson with the check between); scripts 150 / 142 / 146 / 150; intro 120; summary 175, opener ok.
• check_key_tells.py → KEY TELLS: 0 of 111 MCQs flagged (a: 0, b: 0, c: 0).
• build_tools_names.py Bauer Kayla Travis Valeria → all free, exit 0.
• check_svg_ids.py → PASS (35 figures, 0 ids).
• Video batch rebuilt (handoff/G4T38/videos/batch_G4T38.json, 6 videos); check_brief.py: every video clean except the INTRO's standing R79 hit; grep -c Tori 0; grep -ci strand 0. Not sent.
• Blind bundle re-cut: grade4/topic38_build/blind/2026-10-02-v2/ (111 MCQ, 3 typed, 1 FRQ); grep "[Drawing:" | grep -iE "extinct|adapt|forest|gone|suits" → 0.
• Page: /tmp/g4t38_v2.html built (4 lessons, 14 practice, 51 PP100, 35 figures); every article route, the L02 quiz route, the summary and the PP100 screenshotted at 1280 px and at a 360-px viewport (/tmp/g4t38_v2_shots/), opened; the check-between renders in L04's article; no empty figure box.

#### Key strings (content order)

• Attached, video order: A B B A A B B (unchanged).
• L01 two-option A B B A B A A; three-option 1 0 0. L02 two-option A A B B A; three-option 2 1 2 0 1. L03 two-option A B B A B B A A B; three-option 1; four-option 1. L04 two-option A A B B B A; three-option 1 0 2 1 2; four-option 2. Practice: two-option A B A A B B; three-option 0 2 0 2 0; four-option 0 3.
• PP100: 51 items = 48 MCQ + 3 typed (PP-38 water, PP-40 fossils, PP-44 extinct); easy 17 · medium 20 · hard 14; per atom 045 e8/m4 · 050 e5/m6/h2 · 051 e4/m4/h5 · 052 m6/h7 (S11, S31 clean); MCQ keys A 12 · B 15 · C 12 · D 9.
• v2 bundle letters (seeded shuffle), no run of four: L01 CBAABAAABBA · L02 BAABABAAABB · L03 ABAAABAABBCB · L04 BABBACABBBCDA · PR CACBBBABAAADC · PP BBAABDCBBDBCBDCACACCABCBDAAABBABAABBCABACABDCABB.

#### Changed ids

L01-q5, L01-q9; L02 article (rule lines, Topic 21 lines, alligator strip, fern caption), L02-q7, L02-q8 (Valeria), L02-q10 (Kayla, TRUE); L03 headache / article / script, L03-q2, L03-q7 (Kayla), L03-q9 ↔ L03-q10 swapped (q9 is now the Costa Rica frog, q10 Kayla's Tyrannosaurus claim), L03 recall MCQ unchanged; L04 article (coin order, musk-ox gloss, mammoth tense, the check step), L04 script, L04-q4, L04-q9 (Kayla), L04-q11; intro, blurb, summary, summary bullet 1; PR-9 (Kayla); bank: PP-02, PP-10, PP-12, PP-13, PP-14, PP-16, PP-17 (moved, easy), PP-22, PP-23, PP-24, PP-25 (the two cliffs), PP-30, PP-31→ numbering shift after PP-17, PP-38 and PP-40 accepts, PP-43, PP-44 (new typed), PP-45, PP-49 source; figures: season_card / two_cards / season_cards(_headache), season_table, spring_table, fossil_strip (vertical), fossil_cases_table, cliff_kansas, gone_card, extinct_sort_table, decision_card, kinds_table, the four rule cards, every placeholder brief; IMAGE_BRIEFS names.

#### Judged differently, and why

• Topic 21's rule is split into two idea lines, not quoted as one sentence: the sentence is 23 words and S1 fails an idea line over 22; the split is at its "and", every word kept.
• The check between is a new article step plus one additive branch in the shared builder. The Grade 4 site had no in-article check (every earlier "check between" was a split into two lessons); the coordinator ruled one lesson, so the builder learned a check step that re-uses the lesson's own quiz items by index. The two items stay in the quiz so the video route and S33 (recognition before recall) still hold.
• The bundle's key runs were broken by re-keying, not by re-ordering options at random: two-option yes/no items keep Yes first, so the flips landed on the non-claim items (L01-q9, L04-q11, PP-10, PP-12) and on the order of L03-q9/q10; S7 is clean (no position over 60 %).
• The wide tables were not forced under 13 px. Narrowing them means prose; the record names the px and the builder fix.
• PP-21/22/45 (blind-read flags, not in the Worth-fixing table) were applied anyway: one clause each, cheap and safer.
• L01-q4 "most" → "many" was left (the review's Leave list).

v3 — polish (2 October 2026)

Skill: course-build → write-mcqs (the item polish and its key-tell checker) · write-like-james (the Needs-you page, records/REVIEW_NEXT_G4T38.md → course_preview/review/REVIEW_NEXT_G4T38.html) @ e23b67f

In plain words. Reader C read the whole v2 bundle cold, 115 items, and agreed every key. Three soft edges and a note on the names are what this pass fixes: one bank stem said "thousands" where "rare" was on offer; one typed item's accept list needed checking against "bones"; one practice item leaned on whether "dormant" is ever said of an animal (it is not); and Travis was wrong in 7 of his 8 lines. Nothing moved tiers, no key changed its meaning, no script line changed, and the video batch was not rebuilt or sent.

#### Changed ids

#### Checks made, nothing changed

• PP-40's accept list takes "bones", "the bones", "a skull" and "teeth" (and "its bones", "its teeth", "bones and teeth", "the skull", "skull", "a skeleton"): verified by importing FOSSILS and testing each string → all True. Reader C's "bones" is accepted.
• "dormant" is said of plants only. L01's article line 50 uses it for the maple ("is dormant all winter"); every other appearance is an option in a sister-term list (L01-q2, L03-q11, L04-q3, L04-q11, PR-13, PP-50), and every fb that glosses it says "Going dormant is a plant stopping its growth for the winter" (L01-q2, PR-01) or "Dormant is a plant that has stopped growing for the winter" (L04-q3, L04-q11, PR-13). No animal "goes dormant" anywhere in the topic, so PR-01 (the Indiana bats, hibernating) has one answer. Reader C's conditional is closed.
• ⟂ draw constraints re-numbered on the built bank and extended with Reader C's two pairs (PP-10 ⟂ PP-13; PP-22 / PP-26 ⟂ PP-12) in the type sheet's v3 section; the type sheet's v1 list is marked superseded.
• Names and rightness after v3: Travis right in 2 of his 8 lines (L01-q7, L03-q8), and in the quizzes 2 of 5; Kayla 1 of 5 (L02-q10); Valeria 1 of 2 (L04-q10). The bank's five claims all state the verdict in the stem, so a name there predicts no key. Claim keys in topic order: L01-q7 Y, L02-q8 N, L02-q9 N, L02-q10 Y, L03-q6 N, L03-q7 N, L03-q8 Y, L03-q10 N, L04-q7 N, L04-q9 N, L04-q10 Y, PR-9 N: mixed, and one Yes per lesson.
• Misconceptions table, row 1: L01-q7 is now a TRUE claim; the belief is caught when the child answers "no". PP-3 and PP-4 (the climate set) still test it directly.

#### Gates (after every change)

• python3 build_tools_check_topic.py grade4/topic38_build/content/G4T38.py → 0 FAIL, 48 WARN (the v2 list: 47 S36 words, each answered in v1/v2, and the S34 line on "extinct", answered in v2: typed in the bank's hard tier only, by the coordinator's ruling).
• python3 ~/Documents/CourseBuilding-Vault/skills/write-mcqs/check_key_tells.py grade4/topic38_build/content/G4T38.py → KEY TELLS: 0 of 111 MCQs flagged (a: 0, b: 0, c: 0).
• python3 grade4/check_g4_articles.py grade4/topic38_build/content/G4T38.py → 0 FAIL (articles 325 / 380 / 369 / 519, scripts 150 / 142 / 146 / 150, intro 120, summary 175, opener ok).
• python3 build_tools_build_topic_site.py grade4/topic38_build/content/G4T38.py /tmp/g4t38_p.html → 4 lessons, 14 practice, 51 pp100, 35 figures; the page data carries L04's {"t": "check", "q": [2, 3], "text": "Check yourself before the next part."} step and the builder's articleHTML renders a check step as the lesson's own quiz items inside the article, so the check between renders inside L04's article.
• python3 ~/Documents/CourseBuilding-Vault/skills/review-figures/check_svg_ids.py grade4/topic38_build/content/figures.py → PASS (35 figures, 0 ids).
• python3 build_tools_names.py Bauer Kayla Travis Valeria → all free, exit 0.
• Video batch not rebuilt: no script line changed, and grep -c "Travis says that in January" handoff/G4T38/videos/batch_G4T38.json → 0 (the batch carries no quiz item). Not sent.
• Blind bundle re-cut: python3 build_tools_blind_bundle.py grade4/topic38_build/content/G4T38.py grade4/topic38_build/blind/2026-10-02-v3 → 111 mcq, 3 text, 1 frq, 115 held; grep "[Drawing:" | grep -iE "extinct|adapt|forest|gone|suits" → 0.

#### Key strings (content order)

• L01 two-option A B B A A B B (B 4 of 7, 57 %); three-option 1 0 0. L02, L03, L04, practice, attached and bank strings unchanged from v2 (PP100 MCQ keys A 12 · B 15 · C 12 · D 9).
• v3 bundle letters (seeded shuffle), no run of four in any group: L01 CBAABABBAB · L02 BAABABAAAB · L03 ABAAABAABBC · L04 BABBACABBBCD · summary BBB · PR CACBBBABAAATDC · PP BBAABDCBBDBCBDCACACCABCBDAAABBABAABBCTATBACTABDCABB (T = typed).

#### Owed

• James's read of course_preview/review/REVIEW_NEXT_G4T38.html (six questions; the three the author asked, the passenger pigeon's cause, the in-article check as a site feature, the renamed child).
• The picture pass (12 photo and 4 cartoon placeholders) waits for his sign-off, per the 2 Oct sequencing rule; the six-video batch goes on his notes on the scripts.

Skill: course-build → write-mcqs → write-explanation, design-check-sequence @ efd8fba

Topic 38 — What happens when a place changes — the PP100's question types, with their exemplars (v1, 2 October 2026)

What this page is. James reads a bank as its question TYPES first (vault: A bank is reviewed as its question types first, one exemplar each). Under the Grade 4 standing brief the bank is built straight away (51 items in content/G4T38_pp100_bank.py); this sheet is the way in. Each type line says what the stem asks, what the four options (or the accept list) are, and prints one exemplar in full. Tags follow depth of reasoning — easy = one fact or a one-step read; medium = the rule applied to a fresh case, a reason picked, or a drawn cliff read; hard = two ideas chained, a claim judged by its correct reason, a term recalled from a fresh description with no cue word, or a word produced — and rise with the atom's order: LIF4-045 (the same winter, place to place) carries easy and medium only; LIF4-050 (fossils tell the past) runs easy to hard; LIF4-051 (extinct) runs easy to hard; LIF4-052 (the capstone) carries medium and hard only. Every hard item carries a one-line "hard because" (hb) in the bank file.

Rulings already applied. Four options on every MCQ (four fixed sets: the winter-climate set "cold, snowy winters / mild winters / hot, dry summers / rainy summers"; the what-the-place-was set "under the sea / damp and shady / a dry desert / cold, with snow"; the four sisters "extinct / rare / migrating / hibernating"; the outcome set "The kind lives on there. / The kind moves to a place near that suits it. / The kind is extinct. / The kind grows new features to fit."); a fixed set's longest member is whitelisted from the length check by name (the same words sit under every item of its run: PP-4 and PP-7 on the climate set, PP-33 and PP-38 on the outcome set); no option bundles a verdict with its reason (every claim is "X is wrong … What is the correct reason?" with four single-statement reasons); every stem is a positive question of at most two sentences unless tagged hard (S23); an item cliff carries no number chips and its blind text is Topic 21's data line (the bands top to bottom, colour and contents); the stem's layer sentence and the drawing are built from ONE list (ITEM_CLIFFS, bottom to top; cliff_words()); "extinct" and "adapted" are recalled by MCQ among their sisters (RECALL_BY_MCQ, the brief's call for this topic); the typed keys are "water" (closed by the author's note: a fish can stay alive only in water; sea, ocean, lake and river accepted) and "fossils" (a lexicon word); no multi-select; every item names ONE atom; US spelling; units as words. MCQ keys A 12 · B 13 · C 13 · D 11.

The bar list (real things a generated item must never use): any mechanism word (natural selection, evolve, evolution, survival of the fittest: grade 6-8's); "adapt" as a verb a kind performs ("the kind adapts", "adapted itself") — "adapted" is a describing word only; "decide", "learn", "try", "want", "plan" as what a kind does, except inside a claim the key refuses; a cause of the ice age or its ending; hunting as the cause of any kind's dying out (nothing frightening; the register's "place changes" is the cause this topic teaches); birds as living dinosaurs; any lesson scene (Valeria's two grandmas, the Minnesota / Florida January, the Texas hill with sea shells, the Pennsylvania fern, the Montana alligator bones, the Kansas two-layer cliff, the museum and its mammoth skeleton, the dinosaurs as a worked case, the passenger pigeon, the bald eagle, the horseshoe crab, the Minnesota grassland with mammoths, musk oxen and bison; the intro's video call); any quiz scene (Vermont maples and frog, North Dakota pond, southern Texas trees, southern Louisiana butterfly, Georgia and Michigan apple trees, South Carolina live oaks and Maine maples, the Ohio sea star, New Mexico moss, Wyoming palms, the Colorado mountain fish, the Alabama sea turtle, the Carolina parakeet, polar bear, red wolf, great auk, penguins, Florida alligators, the Costa Rica frog, the beaver, the desert lizard, the cold-lake fish, the pine-seed bird, the snail's valley, the seed-eating bird's beak, the cool-forest deer, the goose, the shaded-stream frog, the arctic fox); any practice scene (Indiana bats, the Arizona footprint, the filled-in pond's snails, Seattle, southern Georgia and Alaska towns, the Oklahoma sea urchin, the Nebraska cliff, the Florida panther, the woolly rhino, the salamander, the crow, the turtle's lake, the pale lizard, the parrot); a claim-maker from another topic's row (only Kayla, Travis and Valeria — Tori renamed Kayla in v2); a non-US animal as the example of a kind (penguins and the Costa Rica frog appear only where "far away" is the point); "biggest / smallest" for a count or a distance.

The fifteen types

Hard because — type 8 and 11: the word is produced, not picked. Type 6's Missouri layer: two fossils read together as one time and one place. Type 10's hard items: each claim is judged by its correct reason, which needs two words told apart (rare / extinct), two times put in order (dinosaurs / people), or two facts chained (old fossils / living ones caught today); every distractor half-accepts the belief, so the key is not the odd one out. Type 12's rabbit: the place near seems to suit the kind but has no food, so the move branch fails. Type 13: two kinds against one change; the EVERY in "every one has died" against one pond; a real change with the extinct verdict refused. Type 14: the belief judged by its reason; the move branch read as the place that still suits. Type 15: no cue word.

One exemplar per type, in full

Type 1 (easy, LIF4-045). Wisconsin has cold, snowy winters. In January, what does an oak tree in Wisconsin most likely look like? — bare, with no leaves / green, with every leaf / covered in flowers / full of ripe acorns. Why: In a cold-winter place, trees drop every leaf in the fall. Wisconsin's winters are cold and snowy. So in January the oak is bare, with no leaves. (nearest lesson-side instance: L01's attached question, the Vermont maples, two options — here four states of an oak)

Type 2 (easy, LIF4-045). In January, a yard in Hawaii has green trees, flowers in bloom and butterflies. Which winter climate does Hawaii have? — cold, snowy winters / mild winters / hot, dry summers / rainy summers. (nearest: L01-q4, southern Texas's mild winter given and the trees asked — here the scene is given and the climate asked)

Type 3 (medium, LIF4-045). A cherry tree in South Carolina flowers in March, and a cherry tree in Wisconsin flowers in May. What is the correct reason? — Spring comes earlier to the warmer place. / The Wisconsin tree is a younger tree. / Cherry trees in Wisconsin never flower at all. / The South Carolina tree gets much more rain. (nearest: L01-q8, which apple tree flowers first — here the outcome is given and the reason asked)

Type 4 (medium, LIF4-045). Robins fly south from Montana in the fall, but robins in Mississippi stay all winter. What is the correct reason? — Mississippi's mild winter leaves food for the robins. / Mississippi's robins have much thicker feathers than Montana's. / Montana's robins like to travel long distances every year. / Mississippi has no winter at all, only a long summer. (nearest: L01-q10, why two trees' winters differ — here the same kind of bird in two places)

Type 5 (easy, LIF4-050). A clam fossil is found in rock in Iowa, and a clam like it can stay alive only under the sea. What was Iowa like back then? — under the sea / damp and shady / a dry desert / cold, with snow. (nearest: L02-q4, the Ohio sea star, three options — here the four-place set)

Type 6 (hard, LIF4-050). In one rock layer in Missouri, fossils of clams and fossils of sharks sit side by side. Clams of this kind and sharks can stay alive only in the sea. What does the layer tell us? — Sharks once lived on dry land, beside the clams. / The place was under the sea when the layer formed. / The place was under the sea first, then a dry desert. / The clams in the layer ate the sharks. (hard because: two fossils in one layer are read together as one time and one place; nearest: L02's Kansas cliff, two layers — here one layer, two kinds)

Type 7 (medium, LIF4-050, drawn). [cliff: a fern print in the bottom layer; plain tan sand with no fossils in the layer above it; sea shells in the top layer] In this cliff, a fern print sits in the bottom layer; plain tan sand with no fossils sits in the layer above it; sea shells sit in the top layer. What was this place like first, and what was it like later? — damp and shady first, then under the sea / under the sea first, then damp and shady / a desert first, then under the sea / under the sea the whole time. Blind text: cliff with 3 flat layers, top to bottom: cream shell rock with sea shells; tan sand; gray mud with a fern print. (nearest: L02-q7, shells below tree roots in two layers — here three layers, the order reversed, a plain band between)

Type 8 (hard, LIF4-050, typed). A fish fossil is found in rock in a dry desert in Arizona. A fish can stay alive only in one thing, so that place had it back then. Type the name of that thing. — accept: water, the water, sea, the sea, ocean, the ocean, sea water, seawater, salt water, fresh water, a lake, lake, a river, river, a sea, an ocean, under water, underwater, watter, warter, wter, watr. Wrong-answer lines for sand, rock, air. (hard because: the word is produced; closed by the author's note, S30-INFO)

Type 9 (medium, LIF4-051). No living giant ground sloth, an animal as big as a car, has been seen anywhere for about ten thousand years. Which is true of this kind? — It is rare. / It is hibernating. / It lives far away. / It is extinct. (nearest: L03-q10, the Costa Rica frog, two options — here four, with "lives far away" as the catalogued belief)

Type 10 (hard, LIF4-051). The Labrador duck has not been seen alive anywhere since 1878. Travis says it is only rare. Travis is wrong. What is the correct reason? — A kind of duck can never be called rare, only common. / No living Labrador duck is left anywhere on Earth. / Rare and extinct mean exactly the same thing in science. / Every kind of duck comes back again in spring, like geese. (hard because: the belief that extinct means rare is judged by its reason, which needs the two words told apart; nearest: L03-q4, the red wolf, a bare yes / no)

Type 11 (hard, LIF4-051, typed). The dire wolf is extinct. Today we know what a dire wolf looked like only from one kind of thing, dug out of the ground. Type the name of that kind of thing. — accept: fossils, fossil, a fossil, its fossils, the fossils, fossil bones, bones, its bones, the bones, bones and tusks, a skeleton, skeletons, skeleton, fossel, fossels, fosils, fosil, fossills, fosills. Wrong-answer lines for pictures, photos, zoos. (hard because: the word is produced; "fossils" is a lexicon word)

Type 12 (medium, LIF4-052). A kind of trout can stay alive only in cold water, and over many years its river warms up, but a cold stream flows into the river nearby. What happens to the kind? — The kind lives on there. / The kind moves to a place near that suits it. / The kind is extinct. / The kind grows new features to fit. (nearest: L04-q5, the pine-seed bird's move, three options — here the four-outcome set with the Lamarckian distractor)

Type 13 (hard, LIF4-052). A kind of frog lives in hundreds of ponds across the state of Georgia. One pond dries up, and the frogs in it die. Which is true of the kind? — The kind is extinct. / The kind lives on. / The kind is extinct in Georgia. / The kind moves to the sea. (hard because: the extinct verdict needs EVERY one of the kind gone, and one pond's frogs are not the kind; no lesson-side instance — the quiz's predictions all give a kind that lives in one place only)

Type 14 (hard, LIF4-052). Over many years a valley grows too dry for a kind of toad that needs damp ground, and the toad kind becomes extinct. Travis says the toads should have learned to live without damp ground. Travis is wrong. What is the correct reason? — Toads are too small to learn. / The toads had too little time to learn. / A kind cannot change its features by trying. / Toads can live on dry ground if they try hard. (hard because: the belief is judged by its reason; nearest: L04-q7, the seed-eating bird's beak, a bare yes / no)

Type 15 (hard, LIF4-052, keyed on the term). The kangaroo rat of the Arizona desert never drinks: it gets all its water from the seeds it eats. Which word says this about the kangaroo rat and the desert? — extinct / dormant / migrating / adapted. (hard because: the term is recalled from a fresh description with no cue word; nearest: L04-q11, the arctic fox, whose stem says "suit")

Draw constraints (⟂ pairs — never on one test together)

• PP-14 (the mastodon, extinct) ⟂ PP-41 (the dire wolf, typed "fossils"): the first prints "extinct" as a key beside a ten-thousand-years case; a reader who meets both sees the pair's shape.
• PP-9 / PP-11 (clam, coral → under the sea) ⟂ PP-12 (which fossil shows under the sea): PP-12's key "a sea shell" is the datum PP-9 and PP-11 state.
• PP-22 ⟂ PP-23 (the two drawn cliffs): both print "under the sea first" or "damp and shady first" among the orders; one per test.
• PP-33 / PP-38 (the move branch, trout and butterfly) ⟂ PP-45 (the rabbit, whose move branch fails): the pair teaches the trick.
• PP-42 (Labrador duck) ⟂ PP-15 (California condor, rare): PP-42's distractor "Rare and extinct mean exactly the same thing" is PP-15's lesson.

Design-move inventory (one line per bank item; the move, the scene kind, the nearest earlier item)

v2 — the reviews applied (2 October 2026)

Skill: course-build → write-mcqs → write-explanation @ e23b67f

• The bank is now 51 items = 48 MCQ + 3 typed (easy 17 · medium 20 · hard 14; MCQ keys A 12 · B 15 · C 12 · D 9). "extinct" is TYPED in the hard tier on the coordinator's ruling and leaves RECALL_BY_MCQ; L03-q11 and PR-14 still recall it by MCQ.
• Type 16 (hard, LIF4-051, typed) — the coined word produced from a fresh description, no cue word. Exemplar (PP-44): A huge sea animal called Steller's sea cow once swam off Alaska. The last one died more than two hundred years ago, and no living one is left anywhere on Earth. Type the one word that says what this kind is. — accept: extinct, extint, extinkt, exstinct, extinced, extincted, "extinct.", it is extinct, is extinct, an extinct kind, extinct kind, gone forever, died out. Wrong-answer lines for rare ("A rare kind still has a few living ones…"), gone ("Gone is close. When every one of a kind has died … we say the kind is extinct."), dead. Hard because: the word is produced, not picked (the near-miss grader handles one or two letters off). Nearest lesson-side instance: L03-q11, the recall MCQ (four sisters) — here typed. ⟂ draw constraint: PP-44 is drawn LAST in any test that also draws a type-9 or type-10 item (their options print "extinct").
• PP-28 (type 9, the giant ground sloth) is removed; type 9 now holds 5 items (mastodon, condor, beetle, four described kinds, heath hen). PP-29 "Which of these kinds is extinct?" is retagged easy (a one-step read of the definition) and sits at the end of the easy block as PP-17; every later item's number shifts by one until PP-28's slot, then back (the full list is the bank file's order).
• Type 7 (the drawn cliffs, now PP-24 / PP-25): the stem is "Here is a cliff. What was this place like first, and what was it like later?" — the drawing carries the layers (the figure review's cover test); cliff_words is no longer imported by the bank.
• Type 4: PP-12 re-asked as "warm all year" (a fern print / a palm leaf / a maple leaf / a sea shell), PP-13's options a sea shell / a palm leaf / a fern print / a sea star — no key is the odd kind out.
• Type 10: PP-30 (redwood) and PP-43 (the Africa fish) carry "It is rare." as an honest wrong, with the stems giving the count that makes it wrong; PP-14's stem no longer states the definition.
• Accept lists: type 8 (water) adds pond / lake / river / stream forms with articles; type 11 (fossils) adds teeth / skull forms.
• One stated clause on PP-22 (palms cannot stay alive where it is ever cold), PP-23 (a shark can stay alive only in salt water), PP-45 (the rabbit eats the mountain's plants); PP-16 says people have searched the forest every year since 1950.
• PP-49 source: author's observation (no literature source), the lesson lines named.
• check_key_tells.py → KEY TELLS: 0 of 111 MCQs flagged. Blind bundle v2: blind/2026-10-02-v2/ (no run of four key letters in any group).

v3 — polish (2 October 2026)

Skill: course-build → write-mcqs @ e23b67f

One stem changed. Type 10's PP-43 (the fish off Africa) now says "many thousands of living ones swim today off the coast of Africa", as PP-30 says it of the redwoods; Reader C read "thousands" beside the option "It is rare." as a hesitation after PP-15 had just made five hundred condors rare. The why says "Many thousands" too. Key and letter unchanged.

Draw constraints on the BUILT bank (v2 numbering, which v3 keeps). The list under "Draw constraints" above is the v1 list, written before PP-29 moved to PP-17 and PP-28 was replaced; this list supersedes it. The test builder reads THIS list.

• PP-10 ⟂ PP-13: PP-10's stem states "a fern can stay alive only where it is damp and shady"; PP-13 keys the fern print for "damp and shady" (Reader C).
• PP-22 ⟂ PP-12 and PP-26 ⟂ PP-12: PP-22's stem states palms cannot stay alive where it is ever cold, PP-26's that big tropical leaves come from plants that need warm all year; PP-12 keys the palm leaf for "warm all year" (Reader C).
• PP-14 ⟂ PP-40: the mastodon (extinct, a ten-thousand-years case) beside the dire wolf (typed "fossils") shows the pair's shape (v1's PP-14 ⟂ PP-41).
• PP-24 ⟂ PP-25: the two drawn cliffs; one per test (v1's PP-22 ⟂ PP-23).
• PP-32 / PP-37 ⟂ PP-45: the trout's and the butterfly's move branch beside the rabbit, whose move branch fails (v1's PP-33 / PP-38 ⟂ PP-45).
• PP-41 ⟂ PP-15: the Labrador duck's distractor "Rare and extinct mean exactly the same thing" is PP-15's lesson (v1's PP-42 ⟂ PP-15).
• PP-44 drawn LAST in any test that also draws a type-9 or type-10 item (their options print "extinct"), as the v2 section says.
• Withdrawn: v1's PP-9 / PP-11 ⟂ PP-12. PP-12 was re-asked in v2 as "warm all year" (key: a palm leaf), so no bank item now keys "a sea shell", and the clam and coral stems give nothing away.

Names in the bank's claims: Travis makes three (PP-31, PP-41, PP-47), Valeria two (PP-28, PP-42), Kayla none. Every bank claim states the verdict in its stem and asks for the reason, so a name there predicts no key. In the quizzes (v3) Travis is right in 2 of 5 claims (L01-q7, L03-q8), Kayla in 1 of 5 (L02-q10), Valeria in 1 of 2 (L04-q10), and each lesson carries one Yes-keyed claim.

Skill: course-build → review-lesson (Roles B, B2) · review-questions · review-accuracy @ fb37d14 — non-author review, filed by the coordinator from the reviewer's report

Topic 38 — guidance, questions and accuracy review, 2 October 2026

The topic teaches the right science in the right order and every key holds; what is wrong is two promises not kept and a handful of lines a child will read the wrong way. The register's cross (JM, 25 Sep) says the intro AND summary say that the seasons shift a life cycle's timing from place to place — neither does, and the record's claim that the blurb says it is false. The L04 video never says "a kind cannot change by trying", yet two quiz items test it; the L03 video never says "rare", yet the sort set needs it. The Grade 3 fossil rule is not quoted word for word. "Adapted" is coined before its concrete case; "moved north" said ten lines before it is glossed; the mammoth is in the present tense beside the past-tense script. Facts checked true (blossom dates, Hell Creek alligatoroids, Minnesota fossils, the extinction dates, counts).

Key-tell checker: KEY TELLS: 1 of 112 MCQs flagged (a: 1, b: 0, c: 0) — L01-q5: trim to "in the mud at the bottom, cold and slow".

Essentials

1. The life-cycle link in intro and summary (and blurb). 2. The L04 script's missing "a kind cannot change its features by trying" line.

Worth fixing

Rows 3–16 of the table.

Leave

"The dinosaurs are extinct"; the mammoth as place change (right for Grade 4); the passenger pigeon's cause unsaid — offer James the one line "People hunted them until none were left" as an option on the Needs-you page; "warm all year" for alligators; "no longer suited"; L01-q4 "most" → "many" (cheap); PP-41 "bones" and PP-39 "the sea" are ALREADY accepted; "rare" IS coined in L03 after its first use (row 9 fixes the order). Coordinator's ruling: Tori → a free name, as elsewhere, and one true claim for her.

Author's questions: (1) type "extinct" — YES, in the bank's hard tier (replace PP-28) with the misspelling accepts; L03-q11 and PR-14 stay MCQ. (2) L04 — keep ONE lesson with a check between (L04-q3 and L04-q4 inserted after the decision card, before "A kind cannot change by trying"). (3) alligator bones in Montana — keep.

Skill: review-figures @ fb37d14 — non-author figure review with the page pass, filed by the coordinator from the reviewer's report

Topic 38 — figure review, 2 October 2026

What a student notices first: the two January cards do their job in one glance — a bare brown tree on white snow under a grey-blue sky beside a round green tree on green grass under a pale yellow sky, same month in both titles, neither drawn as "better". After that the topic is mostly words in boxes and sixteen grey placeholders waiting for David's pictures.

Must fix before a cold read

1. season_cards (teaching form): the climate chips sit on top of the trees (chip y 43–61; branch tips 50–66; crown top 42). Fix in season_card: 22 more height, sky band from y+62, chip at y+50 between title and sky.
2. fossil_strip_alligator is drawn and placed nowhere. Place it after "So back then Montana was warm all year."
3. The three item cliffs do no work (L02-q7, PP-22, PP-23): each stem prints every layer, the drawing only repeats it. Drawings sound (layers honest, older below, fossil icons ~19 px at 360, no labels; alt and blind text list data only). Fix per the guidance review: strip the layer list from the stem.

Page pass

34 placements; every figure renders on the page as alone; no blank boxes. check_svg_ids.py: 35 figures, 0 ids, PASS. Desktop smallest text 14.3 px. At 360 px the column measured 278 px (before the builder change c30858e) so text figures read 4.8–6.4 px — re-measure after rebuilding; the item cliffs carry no text.

Unplaced

fossil_strip_alligator only.

Minor

Card notes mention a pond that is not drawn (draw a small pond strip or accept notes as notes); kinds_table alt says more than the cells; fern_fossil_photo caption "dark rock" vs the lesson's gray; extinct_sort_table could carry "(was rare fifty years ago)" on the eagle row; decision_card two YES fills (acceptable); the fossil strips are a reasoning chain, not a time strip — honest; the mammoth's end told as place change, nothing frightening; the "eye must see first" line is on only three of sixteen briefs; captions never say "real"; Topic 21's cliff appears as drawn; the bone icon reads as a cartoon dog bone (register-consistent, leave).

Best: season_cards_headache; gone_card_mammoth; cliff_kansas. Weakest: season_cards; fossil_strip_alligator; kinds_table.

Skill: course-build → review-lesson (Role A blind key read, two readers; Role C adjudication by the coordinator) @ fb37d14

Topic 38 — What happens when a place changes — blind read, 2 October 2026

Every key agreed by two blind readers (115 rows each; MCQ disagreements 0; typed water / fossils on list; the FRQ models match). Every fossil item reads one way (freshwater cases give "under water", not "sea"); each extinct / rare / alive case lands in one honest bin; no key says a kind changed by trying or wanting. Nothing frightening except one stem (L03-09 names hunting). The faults are shape and surface.

Flags carried into the fix pass

Readers' files: blind/2026-10-02/READER_A.md, READER_B.md.

Skill: review-lesson @ e23b67f (Role A — blind key reader, Reader C, cold read of the v2 bundle only)

Takeaway

Every one of the 115 items has exactly one answer a strong Grade 4 student would pick, and I could pick it from the stem and options alone. The two cliff items with drawings (L02-07, PP-24, PP-25) read cleanly from the layer list once you know bottom is older; the stem no longer says it, and it does not need to. No key is spottable by length, by a lone "because/so/and", or by a stray capital or full stop; the PP-30 odd-one-out is gone (extinct / extinct-except / not extinct / rare is a fair spread). The extinct / rare / still-alive sorts each have one honest bin, with one soft edge: PP-43 says "thousands" alive and offers "rare" as an option, and PP-15 has just taught that five hundred alive is rare — a careful child can hesitate. No key or option rewards a kind changing by trying, wanting or knowing; every such line is a wrong option. Nothing frightening: the deaths are plain and factual. The three names cannot be read as one. No child is wrong every time, but Travis is wrong in 7 of his 8 lines (right only in L03-08). Two typed items need an accept-list look: PP-40's "dug out of the ground" invites "bones", which is true in substance.

Items

Adversarial answers (typed items)

Cross-item notes

• Cliff items: the three layer lists are all written top to bottom and each bottom layer is the "first" answer; a child who has L02-02 reads them without a hint in the stem. L02-07 is the only two-option cliff and the options are mirror images, so no shape tell.
• Extinct / rare / still-alive: one honest bin on every sort except the PP-43 edge above. The "searched every year, none found" items (L03-09, PP-16) are keyed extinct and the stem carries "anywhere", which is what makes the bin honest.
• Adapt / move / die-out: no key says a kind changed by trying, wanting or knowing. Every such line (L04-06 A, L04-11 B, PP-32/33/34/35/37 D, PP-36 C, PP-47 A and C, PP-48 A, PP-51 A, L04-08 Travis, L04-09 Kayla) is a wrong option. Good.
• Shape tells: none found — no lone "because/so/and", no lone capital or full stop, no key longer by a clause.
• Frightening: nothing; "the last one died" and "they die" are plain and factual.
• Names: Kayla / Travis / Valeria are distinct in first letter and length. Rightness: Travis right 1 of 8 (L03-08), Kayla right 1 of 5 (L02-10), Valeria right 1 of 4 (L04-10). Nobody is wrong every time, but Travis is close to it.
• Bank give-away pairs (⟂ draw constraints): PP-10 → PP-13 (fern = damp and shady in the stem); PP-22 / PP-26 → PP-12 (palm / tropical = warm in the stem); PP-09 / PP-11 → PP-39 is mild (sea animal → under the sea is the lesson, not a give-away).
• PR-01 depends on whether "dormant" was coined for plants only; if the lesson let frogs or bats "go dormant", A and C are both defensible.

Would not ship as is: PP-43 (tighten "thousands" or drop "rare"); PP-40 (accept list must take "bones" or the stem should steer to rock). Conditional: PR-01, if the lesson uses "dormant" for animals.