Topic 18 "How stone, fossil fuels and landforms are made" — your read (8 October 2026)

Skill: review-lesson (Role B, the guidance reviewer, with Role C's fix pass) → review-questions, review-figures, review-accuracy @ cca3af6

Grade 5 Topic 18 — How stone, fossil fuels and landforms are made — non-author review and fix pass (8 October 2026)

The short version

The topic teaches what it says it teaches, and the geology is right at this level: sediment is pressed by the weight of the layers above and glued by tiny bits that water leaves behind, over a very long time; coal is swamp plants and oil and gas are mostly tiny sea living things, buried, pressed and heated for millions of years, never dinosaurs; moving water carves a canyon and builds a delta, wind builds a dune, sliding ice carves a wide U-shaped valley; and the maker kept working for long enough makes the landform. Grade 4's sentences for sediment, sedimentary rock, erosion, deposition, glacier, coal, oil, natural gas, fossil fuel and nonrenewable are reused word for word (checked against the Grade 4 Topic 18, 20, 28 and 29 modules).

Four things had to change. L03 said "canyon" in its opening lines before the lesson coined it. The Great Sand Dunes were described as having no river near them, which is false of the real place (Medano Creek runs along their foot). The coin "flat land built where a river drops its pieces into the sea" sat beside two items that keyed a lake delta, and one of them had to hedge in its feedback. And in the L01 quiz, question 3's key ("tiny bits left behind by water") told the student question 5's answer ("where do the bits come from?"). Sixteen smaller things were worth fixing and are fixed, including the length of every article: 375 / 470 / 475 / 453 words before, 372 / 408 / 434 / 426 after, by cutting lines that fed no item and no rule. Every key letter is unchanged; one L01 item is new.

Nothing here needs James. The author's five judgement calls stand (below), one with a correction to its record.

The author's calls, judged

Findings

Verdicts: Must-fix · Worth fixing · Simplification-leave · Not an error. Every Must-fix and Worth-fixing row is applied.

Root-causes checklist (the ten Grade 4 faults, each looked for): 1 bald jargon — M1 fixed; nothing else coined bald · 2 invented misconceptions — none; three register beliefs, each sourced · 3 verdict with no question — none; Sadie's and Ruby's verdicts follow their questions and recap the claim · 4 "So" before a told fact — none · 5 lettered cases — none; drawings named by what they show · 6 vague phrasing — W1, W6 fixed · 7 heat as an object — none ("the hot rock heats them") · 8 contrasts not parallel — none ("The making takes millions of years. The burning takes minutes.") · 9 convenience term tested — "a wide U-shaped valley" is never a tested term · 10 first-person ban — n/a; "we call it" frames stand · 11 quoted child or teacher at the top — one of four (Sadie, documented); Miss Rowe's line moved to the narrator (W7).

Items changed after the read (every key letter unchanged)

L01-05 (new item: which layer is pressed the most; key first, as the old item's was) · L01-06 (distractor) · L02-03 (distractor) · L02-09 (two distractors) · L03-01 (drawing redrawn: steeper walls) · L04-06 (stem's place) · L04-09 (re-scened) · PR-08 (lake → sea) · PR-09 (re-scened to coal) · PP-12 (distractor) · PP-17 (distractor) · PP-22 (re-scened to oil) · PP-30 (re-scened) · PP-36 (re-scened to wind → a sand dune, key first as before) · PP-37 (lake → sea) · PP-42 (distractor). RECALL-05's distractor changed (the recall bank is not in the bundle). The ids are in blind/2026-10-08-reviewed/CHANGED_IDS.md (ids only).

Key strings after the fixes: L01 two-option A B, three-option 1 0 2 1 0; L02 two-option B A, three-option 1 2 0 0 1, four-option 2 0; L03 three-option 0 2 1 0 2 1 1 1 0 2; L04 two-option B B, three-option 0 2 1, four-option 1 3 0 2; practice two-option A B, three-option 0 0 1 1 0 2 0 2 0; attached A A B B B A B; PP100 MCQ keys A 11 · B 14 · C 11 · D 8 (44 MCQs, 8 typed, 1 order — the bank file's header said 43 / 9 and is corrected). Claim string No No No (see the calls table).

Gates after the fixes

• build_tools_check_topic.py: 0 FAIL, 28 WARN — S46 B = 0, C = 0, D = 0; S30 typed = 10, fail 0; S37 strand = 0; S36 unusual words 15 (the author's 14 plus "Rowe", a name) — each answered in the build record; S8 × 13 (continuous-speech beats, kept as the course lays scripts out).
• build_tools_check_terms.py: no hits (4 declared terms).
• grade5/check_g5_articles.py: 0 FAIL; articles 372 / 408 / 434 / 426 (were 375 / 470 / 475 / 453); scripts 149 / 150 / 150 / 150; intro 120; summary 170; opener ok.
• check_key_tells.py: KEY TELLS: 0 of 108 MCQs flagged.
• check_svg_ids.py: PASS (37 figures, 0 ids).
• check_lessons.py --adapter tools/check_adapter_g5.json: 0 FAIL, 84 WARN; S118 silent; S116 silent (S2 caught a colon-form closing line with no verb during the pass; rewritten). S7 (two-option B 4 of 6), S18 (36 checks over four quizzes), S26 (typed term items in the practice set) as the author answered.
• build_tools_names.py Rosa Ruby Sadie Rowe: all free within the topic; Rosa, Ruby and Sadie recur in Topics 1 and 8 (information only).
• Site built (/tmp/g5t18_review.html: 4 lessons, 14 practice, 53 pp100, 37 figures); every article and quiz route, the intro, summary, practice and PP100 routes screenshotted at 900 px and read, before and after the fixes.
• Blind bundle re-cut: blind/2026-10-08-reviewed/ — 97 MCQ, 10 typed, 1 FRQ, 2 order, 110 held; CHANGED_IDS.md beside it (ids only, no letters). The blind-line grep for option words: one hit ("ice" on L04-02's card, the datum the stem gives).
• Video batch rebuilt: handoff/G5T18/videos/batch_G5T18.json (6 videos); check_brief.py every video ✓, the summary's standing protected-words note only; grep -ci strand = 0; L04's prompt 6076 chars (the author's standing WARNING). Scripts are unchanged by this pass. Not sent.

Deliberately omitted (so the next reader does not re-report them)

Mineral cement and the word "mineral"; the low-oxygen chemistry of peat; coal younger than the dinosaurs (Powder River Basin); lake deltas (the coin says "into the sea"); the Mississippi delta's land loss; uplift and tributaries in the Grand Canyon's story; glacial polish and striations as clues (PP-26 says "scratched and polished" as a datum only); the names moraine and sandbar; "cross-section" as a taught word (Grade 4 Topic 21's).

Owed after this pass

The two cold readers (Role A) on blind/2026-10-08-reviewed/BLIND_BUNDLE_G5T18.md, the sixteen ids in CHANGED_IDS.md read first, check_order_keys.py on the two order items; the picture pass on the four cartoon and seven photo placeholders (the delta and glacier photos can share Topic 16's files); the batch waits for James's word on the Earth and Space sample. Nothing committed; nothing outside grade5/topic18_build/ and handoff/G5T18/ touched.

Adjudication (8 Oct 2026)

Skill: review-lesson (Role C, the adjudicator) @ cca3af6

Agreement. Two cold readers on blind/2026-10-08-reviewed/: both agreed every MCQ key (0 disagreements across 110 items); both order items (L01-07, PP-18) matched the key first → last. No key letter moved.

The readers' flags, each ruled and applied (text only):

Gates after the adjudication: check_topic 0 FAIL, 28 WARN, S46 B = C = D = 0, S30 typed = 10 fail 0 · check_terms no hits · check_g5_articles 0 FAIL (372 / 408 / 434 / 426) · check_key_tells 0 of 108 · check_svg_ids PASS · check_lessons 0 FAIL, 84 WARN, S118 silent · site builds · bundle re-cut to blind/2026-10-08-adjudicated/ (97 MCQ, 10 typed, 1 FRQ, 2 order; 110 held) with CHANGED_IDS.md (PP-04, PP-24, PP-26, PP-39, PP-49 — the two accept-list widenings change no stem and are not listed) · batch rebuilt, check_brief.py 6 of 6 ✓ (the summary's standing note), strand 0. Not sent, not committed. Owed: a third read of the five changed ids.

53 items in content/G5T18_pp100_bank.py: 44 four-option MCQs, 8 typed words (weight, coal, oil, delta ×2, canyon ×2, wind) and 1 order item. Per atom: EAR5-035 11 · EAR5-036 13 · EAR5-037 14 · EAR5-038 15. Easy 17, medium 21, hard 15, rising with the atom's place in the topic. MCQ keys A 11 · B 14 · C 11 · D 8. The types, one exemplar each, are on the type sheet: what presses, what glues, how long, which step; the four steps in order; how a pressed layer changed; why storm sand stays loose; the fuel's source; what buried, what the mud does, how long; why oil is nonrenewable; what buried plants change into and which fuel sits beside oil; the maker of a described landform and the flood-mud near miss; the landform's name; what the water did; the landform a maker forms; what a delta or the dunes do next; the typed terms and the typed predictions; three claims by their correct reason; two-idea chains (a dam stops the delta growing; the valley stays after the ice melts). Every scene is fresh against the lessons, quizzes and practice after the five re-scenings above.

Skill: course-build → write-lesson (L01 and L02 process lessons in the fact form; L03 the example-sequence classification on a kind category; L04 the capstone prediction meeting the two documented SD-7 beliefs) → write-example-sequence, design-check-sequence, sentence-atomise, write-explanation, write-mcqs (quizzes, attached questions, practice, the recall bank, the PP100 bank and its type sheet); write-intro (the topic intro); write-video-script (four lesson scripts); write-summary (the summary); review-figures (author self-check on fourteen renders and four built-page screenshots; the non-author pass is owed) @ cca3af6

Grade 5 Topic 18 — How stone, fossil fuels and landforms are made — build record (v1, 8 October 2026)

What this is, in plain words

Four short lessons on the slow makings: how loose sand becomes stone, how coal, oil and natural gas were made, which maker (moving water, the wind or ice) made a landform, and what landform forms if the maker keeps working. Ruby rubs sand grains off a piece of layered rock at a Texas river cliff and asks what stuck them into stone: layers pile up, the weight of the layers above presses the grains closer, and tiny bits left behind by trickling water glue them, over a very long time (L01; Grade 4's three steps recalled, the pressing and the gluing shown on one pinch of sand at three moments). Sadie holds a lump of coal with a fern leaf print and says fossil fuels are made from dinosaur bones; the leaf print answers her, and the lesson shows swamp plants and tiny sea living things buried, pressed, heated and changed over millions of years, and why that makes fossil fuels nonrenewable (L02; the register's induced belief, voiced because it IS the lesson's point). Rosa's four trip pictures — Yosemite Valley, the Grand Canyon, the Mississippi's end, the Great Sand Dunes — are matched to their makers in one frame, and landform, canyon, delta and sand dune are coined (L03). Miss Rowe's class stands beside a park stream that has cut a knee-deep channel in a hundred years, and the lesson predicts what a glacier, a river and the wind each make given a very long time; the Grand Canyon's river is still there, still carving, and the delta grows every year (L04, the capstone). Counts: 4 lessons; 36 quiz items (8 / 9 / 10 / 9); 4 attached questions and 3 summary questions; 14 practice items (3 retrievals, 1 FRQ, 2 typed); 11 recall-bank items; a 53-item PP100 bank (17 easy / 21 medium / 15 hard; 8 typed, 1 order); 37 figures (26 drawn by code, 7 photo placeholders, 4 cartoon placeholders); intro 120 words, summary 170, scripts 149 / 150 / 150 / 150.

Structural decisions (in place of a blueprint)

One line each, with the reason:

• Four lessons, one per atom, in register order; EAR5-038 (predict the landform) is the capstone and sits last, as the architecture row names it; L04 uses L03's names and L03's order.
• This topic coins four required terms, all in L03: "landform", "canyon", "delta", "sand dune" (TEKS 5.10C names the last three; Grade 4 Topic 20's header says the landform names are "STAAR 5.10C's job in Grade 5"). Each is coined in the frame "… is called a …" as its case closes, reused in L04, recapped in the summary and tested (landform and sand dune by MCQ, RECALL_BY_MCQ; delta and canyon typed). "A wide U-shaped valley" is said in plain words and is never a tested term (its only job is to be ice's landform in the fixed option set).
• Nothing from an earlier grade is re-coined. "sediment" and "sedimentary rock" (Grade 4 Topic 18), "weight" (Grade 3 Topic 5), "fossil" (Grade 3 Topic 27), "erosion", "deposition", "glacier" (Grade 4 Topic 20), "coal", "oil", "natural gas" (Grade 4 Topic 28), "fossil fuel", "nonrenewable" (Grade 4 Topic 29) are recalled with one line on first reuse, listed in recalled_terms, and each has a recall-bank item before the lesson that leans on it.
• The register's own words carry L01's steps ("layers pile up, the weight presses them, minerals cement them"): "mineral" and "cement" are not Grade 5 words, so the cementing is said as "water trickling between the pieces leaves tiny bits behind, and those bits glue the pieces" — the simplification is named below. "The weight of the layers above" is the force's name (8 Oct ruling: Earth's pull on an object is its weight); the article says once "Earth pulls the layers above down. This pull on the layers is called their weight." as the one-line recap.
• The grain box is one drawing at three moments (one seed, one count of grains; the pressed and glued boxes are the same grains squashed to 72 % of the height), so the student sees the SAME sand change. Grade 4 Topic 18's three-step strip is imported whole as the recap figure, never redrawn; the grain box is a new thing registered in figures.py because Grade 4's close-up tiling is a texture, not a process.
• L02's dinosaur belief is Sadie's, in the opener and in one quiz claim item and one bank claim-reason item — the one lesson of the four that opens on a quoted claim (ruling 1: a claim is voiced only where it is the point and documented; the openers are varied: narrator, claim, narrator, narrator).
• L02 heats, never "heat travels": "the hot rock around them heats them" (the 7 Oct heat rule); the nonrenewable why reuses Grade 4 Topic 29's coining sentence word for word ("Coal, oil and natural gas are called fossil fuels, because they take millions of years to form, just like fossils.") and its contrast in one frame ("The making takes millions of years. The burning takes minutes.").
• L03 is a kind category, so the landform IS the case and the object changes each step; the scene cannot hold (four real places), so the block records only object and the verdict, with form: fact (a three-label sort has no yes / no boundary) and a note. The ORDER of the four does the one-change work in the prose: ice carves → water carves → water builds → wind builds. The real places are the four a US child can picture, and each is a photo placeholder.
• L04 is the forward partner, so its four cases run in L03's order on maker and job as the two features (one changes a step) with the object constant ("the land the maker works on"); S118 is silent on both blocks.
• The two SD-7 beliefs are met in L04, not L03, because L04 is where time enters: the canyon case says the river is still there, still carving (the register's counter, as a fact); the delta case says it grows every year and that landforms are being built and carved now. Ruby voices the flood belief in the article and the quiz; Rosa voices "always been there" only in a quiz item and a bank item (the lesson never states that belief).
• Every lesson gets a video — each has a motion a child should watch (the grain box squashing and its gaps filling; the strips building card by card; the ice sliding out of the valley; the time cards' after panels forming). None could do without one.
• The intro is one scene (Rosa and her dad under a layered Utah cliff with a black coal seam, the river in the valley below) with two felt questions and the ready line; it names no lesson's example, coins nothing, says "To find out…" after its questions, and ends on the poll. Narrative type (write-intro step 2). The register's cross note on EAR5-035 asked the intro to make explicit why stone sits with fossil fuels (both slow makings): that link is Dad's line, "stone and coal both take a very long time to make" — Grade 4's recalled fact in the mouth of a person who would say it, with the valley left open as the question. Recorded as a judgement call below.
• One child carries each scene; a second name never hands over an object. Rosa (intro, L03), Ruby (L01, the L04 claim), Sadie (L02); Miss Rowe only in L04 and the intro's absence. Each claim-maker once in the bank.
• Figure kinds: the grain boxes, the pile of layers, the two step strips, the four time cards, the two tables, the four rule cards, the four item cross-sections and the four before cards are drawn by code (exact); Ruby at the cliff, Sadie at the museum, Rosa at the board and the class at the stream are cartoon placeholders with briefs; sandstone, the coal with the leaf print, Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, the Mississippi delta, the dunes and a glacier are photo placeholders. No person or hand is a glyph. Item drawings name nothing by letter; the stem names the drawing by what it shows.
• Recall bank (ruling 11): 11 items, each tagged recalls=<atom> and before=<lesson>, gathered in RECALL_BANK and NOT placed in the quizzes; four before L01 (sediment, how sedimentary rock forms, weight, deeper is older), four before L02 (coal, oil, nonrenewable, fossil), three before L03 (erosion, deposition, glacier); none before L04 (it leans on L03, the lesson immediately before). Mixed practice still carries three Grade 3 / Grade 4 retrievals as items in their own right.

Grade 3 and Grade 4 doorways, printed and reused word for word on first reuse (never re-taught):

• Grade 4 Topic 18 "How igneous and sedimentary rock form" (EAR4-007..010) — lexicon: "Igneous rock is hard, with grains locked together or smooth like glass, and it never has layers." · "Igneous rock forms when melted rock cools and hardens. Fast cooling gives tiny grains or glass; slow cooling gives big grains." · "Sedimentary rock is made of grains or pieces pressed together, often in flat layers, sometimes with shells inside." · "Sedimentary rock forms when small pieces settle in layers, get pressed together and stick, over a very long time." Terms: igneous rock, sedimentary rock, sediment ("small pieces of rock, sand, mud or shell that settle to the bottom of water"). Reused here: the sediment definition and the sedimentary-rock sentence (L01 forest and article, RECALL_BANK-1 and -2); Topic 18's steps_sedimentary figure imported as steps_g4.
• Grade 4 Topic 20 "How rock breaks, moves and settles" (EAR4-020..025) — lexicon lines reused: "Erosion carries the broken pieces away to somewhere new." · "Deposition is the dropping of the carried pieces in a new place, when the carrier slows down or melts." · "A glacier is a river of ice that slides downhill very slowly." (L03 forest, L03 article's Yosemite case, RECALL_BANK-9/10/11, PR-1). Its L06 said "a flat fan of sand" for the river's end and its header left the landform names to Grade 5.
• Grade 4 Topic 21 "How rock layers tell the time" (EAR4-035..038) — "In rock layers that still lie flat, the bottom layer formed first." · "Each new layer of pieces landed on top of the layers already there, so a deeper layer is older." (RECALL_BANK-4, PR-3).
• Grade 4 Topic 28 "Fuels from under the ground" (EAR4-087..089) — "Coal is a black rock that burns, formed from plants of long-ago swamps, buried and pressed for a very long time." (L02 forest and article) · "Oil is a thick dark liquid that burns…" · "Natural gas is a gas that burns…" (L02 article, RECALL_BANK-5/6).
• Grade 4 Topic 29 "Which energy resources nature can replace" (EAR4-090..094) — "A nonrenewable resource is one nature takes far too long to replace, so people use it faster than nature replaces it." (RECALL_BANK-7) · "Coal, oil and natural gas are called fossil fuels, because they take millions of years to form, just like fossils." (L02 article and forest, L02-q9).
• Grade 3 Topic 27 "Fossils" (EAR3-029..033) — "A fossil is a part of a living thing from long ago, or a mark it made, that has lasted until today." (L02 forest and article, RECALL_BANK-8, PR-2). Grade 3 Topic 5 — "Earth pulls every object down, without touching it. This pull on the object is called its weight." (L01 article, RECALL_BANK-3; Grade 4 Topic 20 L05's wording).

The simplifications, named: "tiny bits dissolved in the water, too small to see … glue the grains" for mineral cement (no "mineral", no "cement" as a term); "the hot rock around them heats them" for the deep heat (no temperatures); "mud buries them, so they do not rot away" (no oxygen talk); "tiny living things of long-ago seas" for plankton; coal's swamp placed "long before the dinosaurs" (true of most US coal); "a glacier scraped the valley out" with "rocks stuck in the sliding ice" as the only mechanism; the delta "grows a little every year" (the Mississippi's active lobes grow; its abandoned lobes sink — not told); the park stream's channel "becomes a deep valley" given thousands of years (not "a canyon", since the bed is dirt, not rock).

Questions for James

None. Every structural decision above either follows a ruling he has given or would not change what a student learns (names, the four places, example order, which states the items use).

Design-check-sequence records

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Skill: design-check-sequence @ cca3af6

Part: L01 (EAR5-035)

Type: (a) one-step fact — each step of the making is one thing the student names; the order item is the one production.

Plan: what presses (3 opt, 1) → what the pressing does (3 opt, 0) → what glues (3 opt, 2) → how long (3 opt, 1) → where the glue comes from (2 opt, A) → the mud transfer (3 opt, 0) → the ORDER item (4 steps, first to last) → loose beach sand, is it stone (2 opt, B). Three-option 1 0 2 1 0; two-option A B.

Belongs in practice/test instead: the four-option fixed sets; the step named from a description; the typed weight; the FRQ (PP types 1–8).

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Skill: design-check-sequence @ cca3af6

Part: L02 (EAR5-036)

Type: (c) concept understanding — a making explained, with one documented belief (register EAR5 SD-4) the lesson addresses.

Plan: the WHAT, coal's source (4 opt, 2) → oil's source (4 opt, 0) → what buried (3 opt, 1) → what pressed (3 opt, 2) → how long (3 opt, 0) → Sadie's claim, bare yes / no (B) → the WHY, why nonrenewable (3 reasons, 0) → the TRANSFER, oil and gas together (2 opt, A) → the term fossil fuel recognised (3 opt, 1), last. Four-option 2 0; three-option 1 2 0 0 1; two-option B A.

Belongs in practice/test instead: the claim-reason form; the typed coal and oil; the "what the mud does" reason; the fixed source set (PP types 10–19).

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Skill: design-check-sequence @ cca3af6

Part: L03 (EAR5-037)

Type: (a) one-step categorisation — a described or drawn landform placed under one of three makers.

Plan: six fresh cases (two drawn cross-sections, a drawn river mouth, drawn sand hills, two described) → moving water / the wind / ice (3 opt: 0 2 1 0 2 1) → the sandbar near miss (3 opt, 1) → landform recognised (3 opt, 1) → canyon recognised (3 opt, 0) → delta recognised (3 opt, 2), last. Typed delta and canyon in the practice set (the vault's S26 reads every quiz as one set, so a typed item last in L03 is not last overall).

Belongs in practice/test instead: the four-option maker set with the earthquake distractor; the landform named from a description; the two-landform scene; typed delta and canyon (PP types 21–28).

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Skill: design-check-sequence @ cca3af6

Part: L04 (EAR5-038)

Type: (a) one-step prediction — the maker and its job given, the landform picked from the fixed four; plus the two documented beliefs (register EAR5 SD-7).

Plan: four drawn before cards → the landform set (4 opt: 1 3 0 2) → Ruby's claim, bare yes / no (B) → Rosa's claim, bare yes / no (B) → the WHY, why the carving took so long (3 reasons, 0) → the delta next hundred years (3 opt, 2) → the park stream transfer (3 opt, 1). Two-option B B (both documented beliefs are false; no honest true twin exists that is not the rule).

Belongs in practice/test instead: the claim-reason forms; the typed predicted landform; the maker-removed chains (PP types 29–35).

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The key strings

• Attached questions in video order (L01, L02, L03, L04, summary 1–3): A A B B B A B — B 4 of 7 (57 %).
• Lesson quizzes, three-option items: L01 1 0 2 1 0; L02 1 2 0 0 1; L03 0 2 1 0 2 1 1 1 0 2; L04 0 2 1. Four-option: L02 2 0; L04 1 3 0 2. Two-option: L01 A B; L02 B A; L04 B B — across the topic position B holds 4 of 6 two-option items (67 %; the vault's S7 WARN): the two L04 items are the register's two documented beliefs, both false, and the L01/L02 pairs already split A / B. Recorded, not padded.
• Practice: three-option 0 0 1 1 0 2 0 2 0, two-option A B; PP100 MCQ keys A 11 · B 14 · C 11 · D 8 (44 MCQs); the eight typed items and the order item carry no letter.
• Claims: three in the quizzes (L02-q6 Sadie; L04-q5 Ruby; L04-q6 Rosa), all keyed No — each is a documented register belief and the lesson addressed it; three claim-reason items in the bank (PP-42, PP-49, PP-50). No invented claim anywhere.
• Order convention: the two order items (L01-q7, PP-18) store their key FIRST → LAST, the direction the stem asks ("from first to last"). Lettered drawings: none (every drawing is named by what it shows: "the deep, narrow gap", "the fan of brown land").

The example sequences, written out (and the S118 result)

L03 (kind category, form: fact, one frame "What made this shape of the land: moving water, the wind or ice?"): Yosemite Valley — wide, flat floor, steep sides like a U → ice (a glacier scraped it wider and deeper, then melted) · the Grand Canyon — steep rock walls, a river at the bottom → moving water (the river carried rock away and cut down; "canyon" coined) · the Mississippi's end — flat land of mud and sand into the sea → moving water again (the river slows and drops its pieces; "delta" coined) · the Great Sand Dunes — hills of loose sand, no river → the wind (it drops sand where it slows; "sand dune" coined). One thing moves a step: the maker (ice → water), the job (carves → builds), the maker (water → wind). Rule: To match a landform to its maker, ask what carved the land or dropped the pieces there. Moving water carves a canyon and builds a delta, wind builds a sand dune, and sliding ice carves a wide U-shaped valley.

L04 (fact form, one frame "If this keeps working here for a very long time, what landform forms?"): ice keeps sliding → a wide U-shaped valley · a river keeps carrying rock away → a canyon (Ruby's flood claim met: the river is still there, still carving) · a river keeps dropping sand and mud at the sea → a delta, growing every year · the wind keeps piling loose sand → sand dunes, which move as the wind keeps blowing. Features maker and job, one changing a step. Rule: Where wind, water or ice keeps working on the land for a very long time, a landform forms, bit by bit. To predict it, ask what keeps working there and what it does.

L01 and L02 carry no block (process lessons in the fact form: a making that happens the same way every time has no near-miss non-example).

Self-check table (write-example-sequence), both blocks: rule 1 minimal difference — no verdict flips (three labels / four labels, all positive), so no boundary pair; rule 2 maximal variation — L03 varies the place, the drawing and the job across four positives, L04 varies the maker and the job; rule 3 both sides — fact form declared (no honest non-example: every shape of the land has a maker, and every maker kept working forms a landform); rule 4 same object — L03's object is the case (kind category), L04's object is constant; shape — a positives-only run in L03's order, chosen so one thing changes a step. S118: silent (0 FAIL, 0 WARN) after form: fact was set on both blocks.

The rules applied (rulings 1–13 of the brief, and where each bites)

Also applied: the 7 Oct heat rule; "Biggest / smallest" never used for an amount; every number with its unit word ("millions of years", "about a hundred years", "knee-deep"); US spelling; "strand" never said (S37 = 0); recap openers "So, here's what we've seen." / "Here's the pattern." / none where the beat before names the cases; places a child knows (Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, the Mississippi, Colorado's dunes; "a hillside a river has cut into" in the bank, never "a road cut"); an unfamiliar object described before it is named (the knee-deep channel; the fern leaf print).

Misconceptions used, by name — and the beliefs deliberately NOT stated

No belief exists in the register for EAR5-035 or EAR5-037, so no claim is voiced or tested on them; their slots are plain and transfer items. Beliefs considered and NOT stated: "stone is made by heat" (igneous is only a distractor), "sand becomes stone in a storm" (the Connecticut riverbank item asks the positive reason), "the wind carves canyons" (never asserted; "an earthquake" is the fourth maker distractor), "the tiny bits are glue from plants" (a distractor only).

Checker results, every WARN answered

• build_tools_check_topic.py: 0 FAIL, 27 WARN. S46-COUNTS B=0 C=0 D=0; S30 typed=10 fail=0 warn=0; S35 0; S37 0; S38 0; S39–S45 all 0.
• S8 "beat carries 3–6 sentences" ×14: kept — the Grade 3-5 script is laid out as continuous speech, one paragraph a beat with the cues under it (vault: Script narration is laid out as continuous speech, with cues after the paragraph); every video is at or under 150 words (149 / 150 / 150 / 150).
• S36 unusual words, each answered: channel ×11 (the stream's channel — an everyday word, the thing is described as "cut into the dirt, about knee-deep" — fine); ordinary ×5 (the register's counter word, "an ordinary river"; "enormous" was swapped to "huge" — fine); split ×4 ("split open", a lump of coal — fine); shallow ×4 (fine); pinch ×3 ("a pinch of sand" — fine); museum ×3 (a place a ten-year-old knows — fine); shrinks / shrink ×3 (a distractor's everyday verb — fine); tide ×2 (a distractor; a Delaware bay — fine); hike / hiking / trail ×3 (the intro's scene — fine); perfect ×1 ("the glue is not perfect" — fine); channels ×1 (the delta's channels, in a caption — fine). Swapped during the build: enormous → huge, shift → move, notch → "a deep, narrow valley", quarry → hill, core → "a long thin piece of rock", barge → boat, furnace → heater, existed → lived, upstream → "far up the river". None asked of James.
• build_tools_check_terms.py: no hits (4 declared terms, each coined in L03 and reused in L04 and the summary).
• grade5/check_g5_articles.py: 0 FAIL; intro 120 ≤ 120, summary 170 ≤ 175, opener exact; scripts 149 / 150 / 150 / 150 ≤ 150. Articles 375 / 470 / 475 / 453 words — four WARNs above 300, kept: a subtitle or figure every ≤ 8 idea lines (the longest runs are 4, 4, 5 and 6 idea lines), each section feeds an item, and Grade 3's approved articles run to 505 (median 308). L02 and L03 are the longest because L02 carries two makings on one set of steps and L03 carries four cases each with its description, frame, verdict and how; L03 was trimmed from 510 (the three recall lines moved to the recall bank; two summary lines folded). The scripts stand alone at the 150-word cap, so the articles carry the full frames and the "being made now" line.
• check_key_tells.py: KEY TELLS: 0 of 108 MCQs flagged (from 10 in the first draft; keys trimmed or distractors named as fully as the key — "People burn it far faster than nature can make it." replaced a 74-character key; the seven fixed sets declared in KEY_TELL_EXEMPT_SETS).
• check_svg_ids.py: PASS — the module writes no ids.
• vault check_lessons.py --adapter tools/check_adapter_g5.json: 0 FAIL, 84 WARN; S118 silent; S116 silent (one four-key alternation in L03's run, 1 0 1 0, was fixed by re-keying the sandbar item to 1 → 0 2 1 0 2 1 1 1 0 2). S11 ×48 "fb[key] is not empty" — the course's item shape (every option has an fb; the key's is the confirming fact) — kept. S22 ×23 "a later stem carries an earlier key" — every hit is a working word of the topic ("stone", "landform", "canyon", "delta", "wind", "millions of years") that later stems must say once the term is coined; none is a verdict or a scene-specific key — kept. S7 ×1 (two-option position B 4 of 6) — answered under the key strings. S18 ×1 (36 live checks over 14) — the adapter counts the four quizzes as one set; each quiz is 8–10. S26 ×1 (no typed term-recall item in the quizzes) — answered: the typed delta and canyon sit in the practice set (S26 reads all four quizzes as one set, so a typed item last in L03 would not be last overall; the first draft FAILED there). S8 ×14 as above.
• check_brief.py on handoff/G5T18/videos/batch_G5T18.json: every video ✓; the SUMMARY's standing note only (163 protected words of 163 — one rule sentence per lesson, every rule spoken word for word). The first build's R79 closing-bullet hit (a 13-word L02 bullet) and young/vague hit (L04's "move with the wind" → "the wind slowly moves them along") were fixed. grep -ci strand = 0. Key string A A B B B A B. The batch is NOT sent.
• build_tools_names.py Rosa Ruby Sadie Rowe: exit 0; Rosa and Ruby also appear in Grade 5 Topic 1, Sadie in Topic 8 — information only (James, 6 Oct); within this topic each name is one child; Rowe is free.
• build_tools_build_topic_site.py → /tmp/g5t18_test.html builds (4 lessons, 14 practice, 53 pp100, 37 figures).

Bank freshness, re-performed

Scene nouns of every lesson, quiz, attached, summary, recall-bank and practice item (the Texas river cliff; the museum coal with the fern print; Rosa's board, Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, the Mississippi's end, the Great Sand Dunes; the Georgia park stream; the Utah cliff with the coal seam; Michigan lake mud, Georgia / California / Florida sea floor, Kansas gaps, Oregon river, Ohio sea mud, North Carolina beach; West Virginia miners, Texas well, Illinois swamp, Pennsylvania layers, Louisiana coast, Kentucky coal truck, Ohio gas town, North Dakota drillers, Wyoming power plant; Idaho cross-section, Alaska glacier valley, Alabama coast, New Mexico plain, Montana valley, Tennessee valley, Nebraska sandbar, South Dakota canyon, South Carolina delta, Utah desert hill; Nevada plain, Washington ice valley, Texas coast, Wyoming flat rock, New Mexico canyon, Louisiana delta, Arizona canyon, Florida delta, Virginia park stream, Colorado river; the summary's Maine stone, Oklahoma well, Montana glacier; the recall bank's Maryland bay, Indiana rock, Vermont books, Iowa cliff, Wisconsin train, Kansas pump, Missouri shell, Arkansas river, Minnesota river, Wyoming ice; the practice's New Hampshire crack, Connecticut footprint, New Jersey wall, Delaware bay, Missouri layers, Indiana mine, Maine valley, Arkansas lake, Iowa gas company, Massachusetts sea floor, Oklahoma plain, Alabama river mouth, Nevada canyon) were grepped against the bank's stems and options as scene KINDS: 0 same-kind hits after the re-scene pass. The first grep found nine same-kind repeats (a Texas coast river mouth, a Nebraska sandbar, an Idaho canyon twice, a Kansas driller, a Nevada plain of loose sand, an Alaska glacier valley with the glacier at its head, a Mississippi delta, a Wisconsin lake bottom twice, a Maryland bay) — each was re-scened (New Jersey coast, Iowa river, Montana / New Hampshire canyons, Wyoming driller, Arizona plain, Idaho ice valley with "a thick river of ice", a Montana lake delta, a Vermont lake bottom, a Connecticut bay) or re-clued (the Colorado U-valley now has a scratched, polished floor instead of a glacier at its head). State names still recur between quiz and bank where the scene kind and the move differ (Georgia: a sea-floor sand layer against buried sea life; Washington: an ice valley against a hard-rock river); listed here so the reviewer can see them. The design-move inventory is in TYPES_G5T18.md.

Blind-text grep

Nine items carry a drawing (L03-q1, q3, q4, q5; L04-q1–q4; the two before cards reused nowhere else). Each drawing's hidden blind line was read against the item's key: the cross-sections name "gray rock", "a narrow gap with steep straight sides", "a thin blue band 5 px high at the bottom", "a wide opening with a gently curved floor and steep sides"; the sand hills "three rounded humps of the same pale orange"; the river mouth "a brown fan shape spreads out into the blue"; the before cards "two gray arrows pointing right", "a very pale blue triangle labelled ice", "a blue strip runs straight down the middle of the green to that line". Literal grep for the keys' words (canyon, delta, dune, wind, ice, water, river, glacier, moving water, U-shaped, carved, dropped, maker) in the [Drawing: …] lines of blind/2026-10-08/BLIND_BUNDLE_G5T18.md: 1 hit — "ice" in the ice-filled valley card's blind line, where the drawn label IS the datum the stem gives ("Here is ice filling a narrow valley"); the key of that item is "a wide U-shaped valley", not "ice". 0 give-aways.

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

Fourteen figures rendered to PNG through headless Chrome and read (grains_three, grains_pressed, layers_pile, coal_strip, oil_strip, time_canyon, time_delta, time_dune, time_uvalley, table_landforms, table_predict, rule_l03, q_valley_v, q_valley_u, q_sand_hills, q_river_mouth, pp_before_river, pp_before_ice, pp_before_mouth); the L01 and L03 article routes, the L04 quiz route and the practice route screenshotted at 900 px and read. Fixed on the render: the three grain boxes held different numbers of grains (the "same grains" claim was false) — now one seed and one count, the pressed and glued boxes squashed to 72 % of the height so the layer visibly thins; the canyon card's layer lines crossed the sky gap (removed); the pile-of-layers chip overlapped its caption (the figure grew to 252 px and the chip shortened); the U-valley's floor line sat below the curve (removed); the L03 rule card's third line overran the card (re-wrapped to four lines). Checked on the render: the time cards read left to right with the arrow and A VERY LONG TIME between; the maker is drawn in both panels where it is still there (the river, the wind) and gone where it has gone (the ice); the item drawings carry no arrows and no maker; the tables' headers fit their columns. Open: the site's placeholder boxes print their notes at two sizes (the photo placeholder's note is large) — the shared placeholder helper's behaviour, not this topic's.

Sentence-atomise self-check (collapsed to the rows that changed)

Every idea line, headache line, forest line, caption and script beat was read for one idea per sentence, cause before effect, a noun subject, a verb carrying the cause, the plain word before the term. Seventeen idea lines over 22 words or three sentences were split at the sentence (the course's S1 found them; all now ≤ 22 words, ≤ 2 sentences): the L03 coining lines ("The river carried pieces of rock away… / A deep valley with steep rock walls, carved by a river, is called a canyon."), L04's frame lines (the question on its own line, the verdict with its because on the next), Ruby's verdict ("No, Ruby is not right. The Colorado River is still at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, still carving." / "An ordinary river made the canyon, given a huge amount of time."), the closing returns. Three headache fragments became sentences ("One shows a wide valley with sheer rock walls, and one shows a deep canyon with a river far below."); the intro's "And what about the valley around them?" became "and what made the valley?". Scripts went through the same pass: every "What forms?" is answered "A canyon forms." (a verb in every verdict); "an enormous amount of time" → "a very long time"; "they shift" → "the wind slowly moves them along".

Judgement calls and rule collisions

1. The intro says "stone and coal both take a very long time to make". The register's EAR5-035 cross note (JM, 25 Sep 2026) asks the intro to make the stone-and-fossil-fuels link explicit; the intro rule says an intro teaches nothing. Resolved for the student: the sentence is Grade 4's recalled fact (its Topic 18 and Topic 28 lexicons both say "a very long time"), spoken by Dad, a person who would say it, and the valley is left as the open question. No lesson's rule line is said or paraphrased.
2. L01 does not coin "sediment" (the brief: "coined if Grade 4 did not"): Grade 4 Topic 18 coined it, so it is recalled with its definition line and a recall-bank item.
3. No "mineral", no "cement". The register's words; neither is a Grade 5 term in the standards. The gluing is said in plain words and the simplification is named above.
4. L03's kind run records only object and the verdict. The four landforms are four real places, so the scene cannot hold; the one-change discipline lives in the ORDER (ice carves → water carves → water builds → wind builds), stated in the block's note and in the prose. form: fact is set because a three-label sort has no yes / no boundary.
5. The typed delta and canyon moved out of L03's quiz into the practice set after the vault's S26 read all four quizzes as one set and failed a typed item that was last in L03 but not last overall. L03 keeps the recognition items (landform, canyon, delta); the practice set types delta and canyon after items that offer them.
6. Two-option keys: B holds 4 of 6 across the topic. The two L04 items are the register's documented beliefs, both false; a TRUE claim written for balance would have to be the rule itself. Recorded, not padded.
7. Articles above 300 words kept, with the reason above; L03 trimmed from 510 to 475.
8. S8 beat length kept, with the reason above.
9. The scripts compress the frame. At 150 words L03's third and fourth cases drop the spoken frame question (the article carries all four) and L04's "landforms are being made right now" line lives in the article and the delta beat's "growing every year"; the videos stand alone on the steps, the cases and the rule.
10. Topic 16's figures module changed under this build (its delta_photo disappeared between two runs), so the import was dropped and the delta and glacier photo placeholders are this topic's own; the depiction is the same photograph brief. Recorded here for the coordinator (one depiction per thing: if Topic 16 lands a delta photo, the picture pass can reuse one file for both).
11. check_parallel.py asks for one varying slot in "The making takes millions of years. The burning takes minutes." The subject and the time both vary by necessity; the pair shares one frame ("The X takes Y") and is James's own shape for the renewable / nonrenewable contrast. Kept.
12. A Grade 3 force recall sits in the recall bank (FOR3-021, "weight") because L01's pressing force is named by it; the atom id is the Grade 3 register's.

Owed

• The non-author reads: review-questions over every item, review-figures over the fourteen renders and the twenty-three others (the record above is the author's self-check), review-accuracy (the geology at the course's level: the delta's growth, the swamp's age, the glacier's scraping).
• The blind read of blind/2026-10-08/BLIND_BUNDLE_G5T18.md (97 MCQ, 10 typed, 1 FRQ, 2 order; 110 items) against KEYS_SEQUESTERED_G5T18.json, then adjudication.
• Pictures: eleven placeholders (four cartoons, seven photos) through David's pack at the picture stage; no question for James holds them.
• Videos: handoff/G5T18/videos/batch_G5T18.json (6 videos) is built and checked and NOT sent — it waits for James's go on the Earth and Space sample (Topics 15 and 20) as the architecture's Card 5 says.
• Nothing committed; nothing outside grade5/topic18_build/ and handoff/G5T18/ touched.