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 and the fix pass; the two cold reads are owed), review-questions, review-figures, review-accuracy @ cca3af6

Topic 16 "Earth's four spheres" — 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 The geosphere: Earth's rock and soil	EAR5-021	The geosphere is all of Earth's rock and soil. From the ground under your feet. To the deep inside of Earth.
L02 The hydrosphere: Earth's water	EAR5-022	The hydrosphere is all of Earth's water. The oceans, the lakes, the rivers. The ice, and the water under the ground.
L03 The atmosphere: Earth's air	EAR5-023	The atmosphere is the layer of air wrapped around Earth. From the ground up to where the air ends.
L04 The biosphere: Earth's living things	EAR5-024	The biosphere is all the living things on Earth. Wherever they live.
L05 Name the four spheres	EAR5-025	Ask what the thing is. Rock or soil: the geosphere; water: the hydrosphere. Air: the atmosphere; a living thing: the biosphere.
L06 Name the spheres at work in an event	EAR5-026	Ask: which sphere is doing the acting? Ask: which sphere is being changed? Say it: the first sphere acts on the second.

The intro script (117 words, about 58 s)

Here's Quinn on a beach in Oregon, the morning after a storm. Waves wash over the wet sand. The wind flattens the dune grass, and a gull lands on a rock. The sand, the waves, the wind, the grass and the gull look different. But scientists sort them into the big parts of Earth, and each part has its own name. So what are those names, and which part was doing what in last night's storm? To find out, we will look at Earth's rock and soil, its water, its air and its living things, and what each one does in a storm. Okay, so are you ready to find out the names of Earth's big parts?

The question types (from `TYPES_G5T16.md`)

Type 1 (easy, medium · MCQ, the four-name set · 021–025): which sphere a named thing belongs to (a canyon wall, clay, a river, the wind, a salmon, people, a frozen waterfall, a rabbit, hot water from the ground, deep-sea worms, a pile of dirt, coral, rock dust, breathed-out air) — the geosphere / the hydrosphere / the atmosphere / the biosphere (fixed)
Type 2 (easy · MCQ · 021, 022): what sand is made of; what frost is — four materials
Type 3 (easy, medium · MCQ, four things from one scene · 021–024): which of four things in one scene belongs to the named sphere — four things of the scene (one per sphere)
Type 4 (easy · MCQ · 021, 022, 023): how far down the geosphere reaches; where some of Earth's water is besides the oceans, lakes, rivers and ice; where the atmosphere begins — four places / extents
Type 5 (medium · MCQ · 021): which part of mud (soil mixed with water) belongs to the geosphere — the soil / the water / both / neither
Type 6 (medium · MCQ · 022, 023): where poured water goes when it disappears into dry soil; what the thin pale layer round Earth is; what happens to the air as a balloon rises — four single statements
Type 7 (medium · MCQ, the four-name set, a drawn scene · 025): which sphere the bottom band / the reeds / the cloud drops in a drawn cross-section belong to — the four names
Type 8 (medium · MCQ, four pair sentences · 026): which sphere acts on which in a fresh event — "The X acts on the Y." ×4 (the key, its reverse, two others)
Type 9 (medium · MCQ · 026): which spheres are at work when a beaver's dam makes a pond — the pair / each alone / another pair
Type 10 (easy · MCQ, the four-name set · 021–024): which sphere a definition names — the four names
Type 11 (medium · MCQ, the four-name set · 025): which sphere icicles / Greenland's ice sheet belong to (ice must first be read as frozen water) — the four names
Type 12 (hard · MCQ, four pair sentences · 026): which sphere acts on which, where the acting thing must first be read as frozen water, tiny pieces of rock or a living thing — "The X acts on the Y." ×4
Type 13 (hard · MCQ, four pair sentences · 026): which sphere acts on which at ONE named moment of an event with two changes — "The X acts on the Y." ×4
Type 14 (hard · multi-select · 026): the TWO spheres changed by river water over a garden — the four names; keys the geosphere and the biosphere
Type 15 (medium · MCQ, the four-name set · 026): the sphere being changed, the acting thing named in the stem — the four names

Six short lessons for six atoms, in Miss Pascual's class with Pedro, Quinn and Rafael.

Pedro digs a hole to plant an apple tree and his shovel hits rock, so L01 teaches that the rock goes down for miles, that a mountain, beach sand and garden soil are all rock or tiny pieces of rock, and that all of Earth's rock and soil together is called the geosphere (geo means ground; a ball shape is a sphere).

Quinn's family drives over a river, past a lake, to the ocean under an icy mountain, so L02 teaches that the oceans, the lakes, the rivers, the ice and the water under the ground are one part: the hydrosphere. Ice is frozen water; the water under the ground fills the tiny gaps between the grains, and a well reaches down to it.

Rafael's kite climbs and a plane flies far above it, so L03 goes up from the hill until the air thins out and space begins: the layer of air wrapped around Earth is the atmosphere. In a cloud, the drops are Earth's water and the air is Earth's air.

Pedro fishes with his grandpa among a fish, a duck, a pine tree and a worm, so L04 teaches that all the living things on Earth, wherever they live, are the biosphere.

Quinn's class sorts the things by a river by asking what each one is (L05), and the ice on the same river in winter is the hard case: hard like rock, but frozen water.

Rafael watches a rainstorm from his porch and says who acts on whom with the sphere names (L06, the capstone): the rain water carries the soil (the hydrosphere acts on the geosphere), soaks the grass (the hydrosphere acts on the biosphere), the wind flattens the grass (the atmosphere acts on the biosphere), and a deer eating the grass happens inside one sphere.

Grade 4 Topic 26's four big parts and its two questions ("Which part is doing the acting? Which part is being changed?") are reused word for word and never re-taught; the sphere names are the new performance. Nobody voices a made-up belief; the register's one belief (the spheres keep to themselves) is met by the storm and tested only as a distractor.

The non-author review found one thing that had to change (the pond drawing's band labels sat on the frame's border on the page) and sixteen worth fixing, all fixed: the four sphere names are no longer typed (9 to 11 letters, as the 30 September rule says), the long L06 article lost two sections that fed no item, and a handful of items with a second defensible answer or a borrowed scene were rewritten. Two cold readers then agreed every key (0 disagreements across 131 items); their flags — a few stems that stated another item's fact, a mushroom the lessons never called a living thing, two practice items that repeated quiz items — are fixed, text only, and the "what a thing is, not where it is" sentence is now said in L05 and L06. The batch of eight videos is built and checked but waits, as every Grade 5 batch does, for your word.

Questions for James

none

The lessons

Everything to rule on is on the Needs James page → the lessons, the open questions and the question types, each a card with buttons

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 six scripts is the cue for the two cold reads to be adjudicated and the eight-video batch to go.

What the review found, and what changed

The non-author review (8 October): one must-fix, sixteen worth fixing, seven left as simplifications

The science is right at Grade 5 and nothing the register forbids is said: the four spheres are coined explain-then-label (geo / hydro / atmo / bio, then sphere as a ball shape); a cloud is drops of water in air; every event in L06 shows two or more spheres; Grade 4's interaction sentences are reused word for word and never re-taught; no force is named. None of Grade 4's ten faults appears: no bald jargon (the term sweep is clean), no invented misconception, no verdict without a question, no "so" before a told fact in a coining, no lettered cases, no vague phrase, no convenience term recapped, no quoted child at the top of a lesson.

Must-fix: the pond drawing's "top / middle / bottom" labels sat on the frame's right border on the PP100 page (the frame widened and the labels moved into the margin; re-rendered and read on the page).

Worth fixing, all applied: the four sphere names were TYPED in practice and the bank's hard tier — 9, 11, 10 and 9 letters, "atmosphere" on the hard-to-spell list — against the 30 September rule and against what Topics 10, 13 and 15 did with "substance", "barometer" and "temperate" (now recalled by MCQ; the eight typed items became MCQs on the fixed four-name set, the definitions tagged easy and the two-step sorts medium); the L06 article ran to 525 words, and its glacier section was the bank's own hard event re-taught while its delta section fed no item (both cut; the fire kept as the one taught case where a living thing does the acting; 418 words); the events table said "the wind bends the trees" where the lesson taught the wind flattening the grass; the cut-open Earth said "rock all the way in" and its caption "rock fills the inside" — Earth's centre is not rock, so both now say "deep inside", with nothing added; the cloud near miss in L03 keyed the drops as "not part of the atmosphere", which the state tests' usual convention (clouds in the atmosphere) would contradict (now a crow flying through the air: a living thing, not air); a bank distractor said Earth's water is "only in the clouds" when the course itself puts the cloud's drops in the hydrosphere (now the belief that the oceans, lakes, rivers and ice hold all of it); the dried-lake pair item had a second defensible actor, the dry summer's air (now the ground under a Florida yard sinking and taking an oak with it: the geosphere acts on the biosphere, a pair the bank lacked); the river-bank flood item shared its scene kind with the practice and recall-bank retrievals (now rain cutting channels into a plowed field); the typed glacier sort was L02's quiz scene with the state changed (now icicles) and the typed sand-hill sort was L06's dune (cut); the coral stem said "living" twice, the key's own word (cut); the practice FRQ's second step could be read two ways (the blown soil now piles against young trees and buries their lowest leaves); a silly distractor ("the air turns into water") became a held belief ("there is no air at all above the clouds"); a why named "the geyser" which the stem had only described; one feedback line said "the rain has already landed"; "So are the lake and the river" / "So are Pedro and his grandpa" opened with "so" on a told fact; the intro said "a few big parts" and then "those four names"; and the dig-down column's bottom label touched the column's edge.

Left as simplifications, recorded: the cloud as drops of water in air (no ice crystals); "atmo comes from an old word for air" (Greek atmos, vapour); "where the air ends" (the thinning is said; no sharp edge); "every thing on Earth belongs to one of the four spheres" (made things are never asked); the soil grains drawn in rows (a schematic, not a particle convention); the L05 four-label sort crossing its boundary one way (a kind sort has no non-example); the Grade 3 living-thing line as a one-line composite recap rather than a word-for-word quotation (Grade 3 Topic 32 says it in four sentences).

Full table: REVIEW_G5T16_2026-10-08.md. Items changed, for the cold readers (ids only in blind/2026-10-08-reviewed/CHANGED_IDS.md): L03-02, PR-09, PR-12, PR-13, PP-08, PP-18 to PP-21, PP-26, PP-30, PP-33, PP-34, PP-36, PP-39, PP-43, PP-44, PP-45. Keys of unchanged items did not move; PP-22 to PP-45 are renumbered because seven converted items joined their tier blocks.

The bank, in brief

51 items in content/G5T16_pp100_bank.py: 50 four-option MCQs and one two-of-four select; no typed item (the four sphere names are recalled by MCQ). Per atom: EAR5-021 7 · EAR5-022 7 · EAR5-023 6 · EAR5-024 6 · EAR5-025 11 · EAR5-026 14. Easy 21, medium 24, hard 6, sorted easy to hard and rising with the atom's place. MCQ keys A 10 · B 15 · C 12 · D 13. Fifteen types, one exemplar each on the type sheet: which sphere a named thing belongs to; what sand or frost is; the one thing of four in a scene; how far the geosphere reaches, where else Earth's water is, where the atmosphere begins; which part of mud; where poured water goes, the thin layer from space, less and less air; a sphere read off a drawn pond or hill; which sphere acts on which; which spheres are at work (the register's trap as a distractor); the name from its definition; the two-step sort (ice is frozen water); the two-step pair (a glacier, rock dust, ice in a crack, trees changing the air); one moment of a two-change event; the two changed spheres; the changed sphere with the actor given. Every scene is fresh against the lessons, the quizzes, the practice and the recall bank (the design-move inventory is on the type sheet).

Gates after the fixes

build_tools_check_topic.py 0 FAIL, 45 WARN (every one answered in the review record), S46 A = 0 B = 0 · build_tools_check_terms.py hits {} · check_g5_articles.py 0 FAIL (articles 230 / 270 / 225 / 248 / 292 / 438; intro 117; summary 153; scripts 150 / 144 / 150 / 143 / 149 / 148) · check_key_tells.py 0 of 139 flagged · check_svg_ids.py PASS (42 figures, 0 ids) · check_lessons.py --adapter tools/check_adapter_g5.json 0 FAIL, S118 0 FAIL · names run exit 0 · site builds (6 lessons, 13 practice, 51 pp100, 42 figures); every article and quiz route, the practice, summary, intro and PP100 pages screenshotted at 900 px and read; the five redrawn figures read again on their pages · blind bundles blind/2026-10-08-reviewed (read by two cold readers, every key agreed) and blind/2026-10-08-adjudicated (after their flags, CHANGED_IDS.md ids only): 129 MCQ, 1 FRQ, 1 multi, 131 held; the drawing lines carry no sphere name and no material word · build_tools_video_batch.py 8 videos, check_brief.py every video ✓ (the summary's standing protected-words note only), grep -ci strand 0, key string A B B A C B A B A · the batch is NOT sent.

The records, in full

The non-author review record

See REVIEW_G5T16_2026-10-08.md beside this file (findings table with verdicts and rewrites, checks run clear, items changed, gates before and after, article counts before and after).

The build record (v1) and the type sheet (v2)

See BUILD_RECORD_G5T16.md (the author's 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) and TYPES_G5T16.md (v2, renumbered to the reviewed bank) beside this file.