Skill: write-like-james @ cca3af6 · the build: write-lesson, write-mcqs, write-video-script, write-intro, write-summary @ cca3af6; the non-author review: review-lesson (Role B, the fix pass, and the adjudication of two blind reads — every key agreed), review-questions, review-figures, review-accuracy @ cca3af6
Topic 12 "What the tiny pieces explain" — your read (8 October 2026)
Skim first
The lessons in teaching order, each with its one rule sentence; then the intro script; then the question types. The review page follows.
The lessons and their rules
| Lesson | Atom | Rule sentence |
|---|---|---|
| L01 How a smell crosses a room | MAT5-081 | Tiny pieces leave the thing. They spread out through the air to your nose. Each piece is far too small to see. |
| L02 Drawing the tiny pieces of a gas | MAT5-082 | A gas: a few small dots. Spread through the whole container. Nothing between the pieces. |
| L03 Where the sugar goes | MAT5-083 | The sugar breaks into its tiny pieces. The pieces spread out among the water's pieces. Far too small to see, but still there. |
| L04 What scientists call the smallest pieces | MAT5-084 | Everything is made of tiny pieces. The smallest pieces of all are called atoms. |
The intro script (118 words, about 59 s)
Here's Mabel at home on the sofa. Through the doorway, she can see the kitchen. Popcorn pops in the microwave, and soon Mabel smells it. Nothing she can see has come through the doorway. Then her dad stirs sugar into a glass of iced tea. The sugar vanishes from sight, but the tea tastes sweet. A smell seems to come from nowhere, and sugar seems to disappear. How does the smell reach Mabel, and where does the sugar go? To find out, we will look at how a smell crosses a room, how to draw the tiny pieces, and where sugar goes when it dissolves. Okay, so are you ready to find out what the tiny pieces explain?
The question types (from TYPES_G5T12.md)
- Type 1 (easy · MCQ, the H4 set · 081): how the smell of a named thing reaches a person across a room or street — Tiny pieces leave it and spread through the air / Nothing leaves it; the smell is in the air already / The air near it turns into the thing itself / A nose pulls the smell out of it from far away
- Type 2 (easy, medium · MCQ · 081): who smells it first; where the smell is strongest; where the pieces were before; why the smell takes a minute; why near and far differ; why it is faint across the street — four single statements
- Type 3 (easy, medium · MCQ · 081): what the pieces spread through; what is true of each piece that left the thing; how a dog knew its bowl was filled — the air / the sidewalk / the sunlight / the cart; far too small to see / a tiny red berry / a drop of juice / as big as a seed
- Type 4 (easy · MCQ, the J4 set · 082): which drawing shows the air in a named closed container as it really is — a few dots spread through the whole container, nothing between them / shaded gray, no dots / shaded gray with dots on top / all the dots heaped at the bottom
- Type 5 (easy, medium · MCQ, the W4 set and kin · 082): what is wrong with a described drawing (gray under dots; dots in one corner; dots packed and touching; gray with no dots) — Nothing should be shaded between the dots / There should be no dots at all / The dots should all touch each other / The dots should spread through the whole container
- Type 6 (medium, hard · MCQ, typed · 082): what is between the dots; which sentence is right about shading; Marco's "raisins in dough" claim — the correct reason; what to change to turn a solid's drawing into a gas's; the typed word for what is between the pieces — nothing at all / more air, too thin to draw / gray smoke / water; accept nothing, nothing at all, empty space, space…
- Type 7 (easy · MCQ, the D4 set · 083): where a dissolved solid's tiny pieces are now — spread out among the liquid's pieces / lying in a heap at the bottom / floating in a layer at the top / turned into the liquid
- Type 8 (medium · MCQ, the Y4 set and kin · 083): why the dissolved stuff seems to be gone; how two spoonfuls taste; which sentence is true of the water sprayed from a sprayer of dissolved plant food; which sentence is true of dissolved salt — Each piece is far too small to see / It has turned into the liquid / It has left as a gas / The liquid hides it from view
- Type 9 (medium, hard · MCQ, multi-select · 083): which zoomed drawing is right; why a grain is easy to see; the salt-cube claim — the correct reason; the red mix in two cups; the half-dissolved cube; the TWO true sentences — four single statements; the set
- Type 10 (easy · MCQ, the N4 set · 084): what the smallest pieces of a named thing are called — atoms / cells / grains / specks
- Type 11 (easy · MCQ · 084): which of three kinds of matter are made of atoms (all three); a true statement about an apple; which sentence is true of a bike looked at through a magnifying glass (an atom is far too small to see) — four single statements
Four short lessons for four atoms, the last Matter topic, in Miss Lindqvist's class with Marco, Mabel and Marisol.
Marco, upstairs with his door open, smells toast a minute after his dad starts the toaster downstairs, and nothing he can see came up the stairs, so L01 teaches that tiny pieces leave the hot toast and spread out through the air to his nose: many stay in the kitchen, fewer reach the hall, a few reach him, and each piece is far too small to see. Spreading is the only motion word in the topic; nothing says the pieces are always moving.
Mabel is asked to draw the air inside a capped syringe as if she could see its pieces and tries four drawings, so L02 judges them one feature at a time: gray all over (no, air is tiny pieces), gray with dots on top (no, the dots ARE the air and between them there is nothing), a few dots spread through the whole barrel (yes), the same dots heaped at one end (no, a gas spreads out to fill all the space it is given). The video carries the first three; the article carries all four and the four steps.
Marisol stirs sugar into water until she cannot see it, and the water tastes sweet at the top and the bottom, so L03 shows one grain as countless pieces packed together, then the pieces spread out among the water's pieces, each far too small to see, so the sugar seems to be gone but every piece is still there (Grade 4's sentence, word for word). The water is drawn as pieces too, never as a blue fill with dots on it.
L04 tells one fact in Miss Lindqvist's classroom: the smallest pieces of all are called atoms. The word is recognised in MCQs and never typed, explained or built on.
Grade 3's "Every kind of matter is made of tiny pieces far too small to see" and "A gas spreads out to fill all the space it is given" and Grade 4's "we say it dissolves" / "A dissolved material is not gone" are reused word for word; "stuff" stands beside "matter"; "particles" is recalled in one line as Grade 3's word.
The non-author review found one thing that had to change (the four-drawing headache figure clipped its own labels on the page) and ten worth fixing, all fixed. Two cold readers then agreed every key (101 items, 0 disagreements); their notes (a cooler that cannot be pumped into, "dissolves" said in the video before the items use it, a wider accept list for the typed word) are applied. The batch of six videos is built and checked but waits, as every Grade 5 batch does, for your word.
Questions for James
none
The lessons
Also on the site
Topic intro and poll · summary and three questions · mixed practice · the PP100 bank · the type sheet
After you answer
Nothing waits on a ruling. Your read of the four scripts is the cue for the six-video batch to go.
What the review found, and what changed
The non-author review (8 October): one must-fix, ten worth fixing, two left as simplifications
The science is right at Grade 5 and nothing the register forbids is said: no constant motion, no molecules, no atom explained; the drawings put the pieces where the stuff is with nothing between them, and a gas gets a few spread-out dots. The author's five calls stand ("tiny pieces" with "particles" once; three drawings in the video; "atom" never typed; "nothing" as the one typed word; the water drawn as pieces). None of Grade 4's ten faults appears.
Must-fix: the four-drawing headache figure's lower labels were clipped at the frame on the built page, and its upper labels sat on the lower chips (rows spaced, frame taller, read again on the page).
Worth fixing, all applied: L01's candle item asked what reached the far end of the hallway, and the flame's light does too (now "what reached her nose?", with the flame's heat as the tempting-wrong); "When Marisol stirs, the grain breaks apart" made the stir the breaker, which the bank's un-stirred sugar cube contradicts (now "In the water, the grain breaks apart", article and script); honey and maple syrup are liquids in an atom about a dissolved solid (now baking soda, Topic 8's own dissolving case, and brown sugar); two bank items bundled Yes / No with a reason (the bike under a magnifying glass and the plant sprayer, now four single statements each); the H4 set's "Its light carries the smell" was a distractor no child would pick for bacon or cut grass (now "A nose pulls the smell out of it from far away"); the sweet-water zoom laid the sugar's pieces in diagonal stripes (now a seeded scatter); Marco stood in the house drawing as an oval and a block, and the stairs were six floating dashes (now his open door at the top of a drawn flight of steps); "Here is another balloon" leaned on the item before it; the air box on the atoms card had no IF YOU COULD SEE THEM chip; "a sip from the bottom" of a glass became a spoonful, as the items say.
Left as simplifications: the salt-and-sugar table's three constant columns (the sameness is the point of "Salt does the same"); the practice set re-instancing the quizzes' moves on fresh scenes (mixed mastery practice is retrieval of the same skills, by the format ladder).
Full table: REVIEW_G5T12_2026-10-08.md. Items changed, for the second cold read (ids only in blind/2026-10-08-reviewed/CHANGED_IDS.md): L01-01, L02-05, L03-08, PP-01 to PP-04, PP-26, PP-37, PP-40. No key letter moved.
The bank, in brief
50 items in content/G5T12_pp100_bank.py: 48 four-option MCQs, one typed word ("nothing": what is between a gas's pieces) and one two-of-four select. Per atom: MAT5-081 13 · MAT5-082 14 · MAT5-083 16 · MAT5-084 7 (all easy: recognition only, by the register). Easy 26, medium 16, hard 8, sorted easy to hard and rising with the atom's place for the three taught atoms. MCQ keys A 13 · B 12 · C 12 · D 11. Eleven types, one exemplar each on the type sheet: how a smell reaches a person; who smells it first and where it is strongest; what the pieces spread through and what each piece is like; which drawing shows the air as it really is; what is wrong with a drawing; what is between the dots and the "raisins in dough" claim by its correct reason; where a dissolved solid's pieces are; why it seems gone and whether both spoonfuls taste; the zoomed drawing, the visible grain, the salt-cube claim, the half-dissolved cube and the two true sentences; what the smallest pieces are called; which things are made of atoms. Every scene is fresh against the lessons, quizzes and practice on the author's noun list (0 hits); a broader single-word grep shares "dog", "candy", "powder" and "tire" across different moves, information only. Three recall-bank items sit before L01, L02 and L03 (air is tiny pieces; a gas fills its space; dissolved is not gone).
Gates after the fixes
build_tools_check_topic.py 0 FAIL, 32 WARN (the author's answered set), S46 A = 0 B = 0 · build_tools_check_terms.py hits {} · check_g5_articles.py 0 FAIL · check_key_tells.py 0 of 100 flagged · check_svg_ids.py PASS · check_lessons.py --adapter tools/check_adapter_g5.json 0 FAIL, S118 silent · names run exit 0 · site builds (4 lessons, 13 practice, 50 pp100, 38 figures); every article and quiz route, the practice, summary and intro screenshotted at 800 px and read; the redrawn figures read again on their pages · blind bundle blind/2026-10-08-reviewed cut: 96 MCQ, 1 typed, 3 FRQ, 1 multi, 101 held, drawing lines carry data only · build_tools_video_batch.py 6 videos, check_brief.py every ✓ with the standing summary/protected note · nothing committed, nothing sent.
The records, in full
The non-author review record
See REVIEW_G5T12_2026-10-08.md beside this file (findings table, checks run clear, items changed, gates).
The build record (v1)
See BUILD_RECORD_G5T12.md beside this file (structural decisions in place of a blueprint, design-check records, key strings, rules applied, misconceptions used and not stated, every WARN answered, bank freshness, figures, names, judgement calls, owed).