Skill: write-like-james @ cca3af6 · the build: write-lesson, write-mcqs, write-video-script @ cca3af6; non-author review (review-lesson Role B/C, review-questions, review-figures, review-accuracy) @ cca3af6

Topic 22 "How to sort the solar system" — 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 What every planet has in common	SPA5-040	Every planet is a large round ball. It travels around the Sun on its own orbit. No other large ball shares its path.
L02 Inner planet or outer planet?	SPA5-041	Inner planets are small and rocky. Outer planets are big, gas and ice.
L03 What an asteroid is	SPA5-042	An asteroid is a lump of rock around the Sun. It is far smaller than a planet. Most travel in a wide ring between Mars and Jupiter.
L04 What a comet is	SPA5-043	A comet is a lump of ice mixed with dust. It travels around the Sun on a long stretched orbit. Near the Sun it grows a long glowing tail.
L05 Sort a solar-system object	SPA5-044	First ask what it travels around. Then ask what it is made of. Only the Sun makes its own light.

The intro script (107 words, about 54 s)

Here's Miss Villanueva's class with a box of photos from space, spread out on the table. There is a huge striped ball, a gray lumpy rock, a bright smudge with a long tail, and a small gray ball covered in craters. Miss Villanueva asks the class to sort the photos into groups. But which of these are planets, and what are the lumpy rock and the smudge with a tail? To find out, we will look at what every planet has in common, how the eight planets sort into groups, and what else travels around the Sun. Okay, so are you ready to sort the solar system?

The question types (from `TYPES_G5T22.md`)

Type 1 (easy · MCQ · 040): what every planet travels around; the shape every planet has; what "its own orbit" means; how many large balls travel on one planet's orbit — the Sun / Earth / the Moon / Jupiter; a round ball / a lumpy rock / a flat plate / a long streak; one / two / eight / thousands
Type 2 (easy, medium · MCQ · 040): which of four named things is a planet; which is true of a named planet; which fact keeps the Moon from being a planet; what makes tiny Mercury a planet — four named things, or four single statements
Type 3 (easy, medium · MCQ · 041): which of four named planets is an inner (outer) planet; which planet could a described one be; the circled planet on a drawn row — four planet names; four statements for the drawn row
Type 4 (easy, medium · MCQ · 041): what the four nearest are called; what every inner (outer) planet is made of; where a lander can touch down; what is under Neptune's clouds — the inner planets / the outer planets / the ringed planets / the moons; the stuff set; an inner planet / an outer planet / any / none
Type 5 (easy, medium · MCQ, the stuff set · 042): what an asteroid is made of, travels around, where most are, its size, its shape, the biggest ones; what tells an asteroid from Mars — the stuff set; four places; four sizes; four shapes
Type 6 (easy, medium · MCQ, the stuff set · 043): what a comet is made of, travels around, when it grows its tail, what the tail is made of; what happens near the Sun; the correct reason for the tail; why a comet faded — the stuff set; four times; four single-statement reasons
Type 7 (easy, medium · MCQ · 044): which two questions sort an object; which object makes its own light; which question tells a moon from a planet — four question pairs; four objects; four questions
Type 8 (medium, hard · MCQ, the kinds set · 042, 043, 044): a described object: which kind is it (a lump of rock as wide as a town between Mars and Jupiter; ice and dust on a stretched orbit; Titan around Saturn; a comet far from the Sun with no tail; a round ball of ice and rock around Jupiter) — a planet / a moon / an asteroid / a comet
Type 9 (medium · MCQ, drawn card, the kinds set · 044): an orbit drawing (the thing in the middle, a dashed circle, the object on it): which kind is the object — a planet / a moon / an asteroid / a comet
Type 10 (hard · typed · 041, 042, 043, 044): the number of inner planets; the name for a described lump of rock / lump of ice and dust / ball around Jupiter; the stuff an asteroid (a comet) is made of; the one object that makes its own light — 4; asteroid; comet; moon; rock; ice; the Sun — each with article, plural and child spellings
Type 11 (hard · MCQ · 044): Tobias's claim is wrong: what is the correct reason — four single-statement reasons

Five lessons for five atoms, the last Earth and Space topic, in Miss Villanueva's class with Uma, Vera and (in the bank) Tobias.

L01 puts the eight planets side by side — tiny gray Mercury, huge striped Jupiter — and finds the three things every planet has: a large round ball, around the Sun, on its own path; the Moon is the recalled no.

Uma says a spaceship could land on Jupiter and people could walk about on it, so L02 shows the four small rocky planets near the Sun and the four big gas-and-ice planets far out, coins inner planet and outer planet, and tells her she was not right.

L03 opens on a spacecraft's close-up of a gray lumpy rock and coins asteroid: a lump of rock around the Sun, far smaller than a planet, most of them in a wide ring between Mars and Jupiter.

L04 opens on the bright smudge with a tail over an Oregon field in July 2020 and coins comet: ice mixed with dust, no tail far from the Sun, a long glowing tail when the Sun heats it, Halley's about every 76 years.

Vera calls the first bright point in the west "the first star out", so L05 sorts the solar system with two questions — what does it travel around, what is it made of — and the bright point is Venus, a planet lit up by the Sun.

The planets' order is recalled from Grade 3 and never re-taught; meteors are never said; "gravity" is never said. The non-author review is applied (two must-fixes on one case, twelve small fixes); every gate is at its stated result; two cold readers agreed with every key (0 disagreements on 125 items), their two flags are applied; the batch is built and not sent.

Questions for James

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

Intro (107 words, poll), summary (174 words, three attached questions), mixed practice (14, three Grade 3 retrievals, three typed), PP100 bank (55: 48 four-option MCQs, 7 typed; type sheet TYPES_G5T22.md), recall bank (6, held apart from the quizzes). Pictures: six placeholders (Jupiter's cloud tops, an asteroid close up, the comet over the field; the class with its box of photos, Uma with her poster, Vera at sunset) wait for your answer above and David's pack.

After you answer

Pluto in: one line and one card go into L01's article and script (the script is at 150 words, so one sentence comes out of the Mercury beat), the term sweep is re-run, the batch is rebuilt. Pluto out: nothing moves. Either way a short re-read of the four ids changed at adjudication runs, then the picture pass, then the batch goes on your word.

What the review found, and what changed

Two must-fixes on one case. A quiz item and a bank item said a round ball has "no path of its own" because thousands of smaller rocks share it. The rule says no other LARGE ball shares a planet's path, and Jupiter's path is shared by thousands of small rocks, so a careful student (and an astronomer) would have answered the other way. Both now say "other balls about as big" share the path — the real Pluto and Ceres case. Keys unchanged.
What before why in L04. The comet-tail explanation came before the frame asked "Does the comet have a tail now?"; the article now asks, shows the tail, then says why.
"Made of: a round ball". The sort table and sort cards answered "what is it made of?" with a shape; they now say "a round ball of rock" / "of rock, or of gas and ice" / "of ice".
From the cold readers. "The ringed planet" on two drawn-row bank items read as Saturn; it is now "the circled planet". A distractor that said an asteroid "has no moon of its own" was false in fact and is replaced.
Small items. A quiz item that repeated its lesson's attached question word for word (now Neptune); a summary item that repeated a practice item (now Neptune); a museum "piece of an asteroid" that would be an iron meteorite (now a sample a spacecraft scoops up); the 1997 comet "for a few weeks" (it was months); "Suppose" on the hypothetical new planet; two feedback lines that said "does not decide it" (now facts); a silly distractor ("far too hot") replaced by a near-miss on place; Mercury's name printed over the Sun on the orbit diagram (moved); two typed accept lists given their article forms.
Left as the author built it, with the reason recorded: "large" against "small" reconciled in one line; "mostly" in the outer-planet definition; "the asteroid belt" unnamed; "moon" widened without a coining; the three long articles (each line feeds an item or the rule, and no split would leave a first half that teaches anything).

The records, in full

records/BUILD_RECORD_G5T22.md (the author) · records/REVIEW_G5T22_2026-10-08.md (this review: 22 findings, gates before and after, the changed ids) · records/TYPES_G5T22.md · blind/2026-10-08-reviewed/ (the bundle both cold readers read) · blind/2026-10-08-adjudicated/ (after their flags; CHANGED_IDS.md ids only).