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), review-questions, review-figures, review-accuracy @ cca3af6 (8 Oct 2026); the blind read (two cold readers) is next
Topic 26 "How a change ripples through a food web" — 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 Draw a food web from who eats what | LIF5-015 | Write each living thing's name once. One arrow for each sentence of who eats what. From the food to the one that eats it. |
| L02 Predict what happens to the next link | LIF5-016 | Follow the arrow to predict the next link. Forward, the change goes the same way. Back, the change goes the opposite way. |
| L03 Trace the ripple through the web, link by link | LIF5-017 | A change ripples one link at a time. Forward: the same way. Back: the opposite way. Then move on to the next link. |
The intro script (120 words, about 60 s)
Here is the sea off the coast of California. A sea otter floats on its back, cracking open a sea urchin: a spiky ball that crawls over the sea floor and eats the tall seaweed there. Long ago, hunters took nearly every sea otter from this coast. Then the sea urchins grew in huge numbers, and the tall seaweed disappeared. The fish that lived in it went too. One animal was taken, and the whole shore changed. How does one change spread so far? To find out, we will look at how to draw who eats what, and how one change reaches the other living things. Okay, so are you ready to find out how far one change can reach?
The question types (from TYPES_G5T26.md)
- Type 1 (easy · MCQ · 015): two eats-sentences: which of four arrows belongs in the web, or where the named arrow starts and points — four arrows, every one between things the stem names; exactly one belongs
- Type 2 (easy → hard · MCQ (ordered 1–4) and one typed · 015): from a list of sentences, how many arrows point into (or start at) a card; on a drawing, how many living things eat the plant; a count typed from a five-sentence list (hard) — 1 / 2 / 3 / 4; COUNT accept
- Type 3 (easy · MCQ · 015): what a finished drawing says about a card with arrows out and none in, or in and none out; what to do when a name is written twice — four statements
- Type 4 (medium → hard · MCQ, drawn web · 015): the one arrow drawn the wrong way; the one arrow missing; the one listed sentence with no arrow (hard) — four arrows / four sentences
- Type 5 (medium · MCQ, drawn web · 015): which sentence the drawing shows — four sentences, three of them reversed or false
- Type 6 (easy → medium · MCQ, the NUM4 set · 016): one living thing goes up or down: what happens to the next link, told in a sentence (easy) or read off a drawn web (medium) — more / fewer / the same / you cannot tell
- Type 7 (medium · MCQ, the WAY4 set, drawn web · 016): to predict the next link, which way do you follow the arrow — forward, to the eater / back, to the food / sideways, to the plant / both ways at once
- Type 8 (medium · MCQ · 016): the correct reason for a stated next-link outcome — four single-statement reasons
- Type 9 (hard · multi · 016): the set of eaters with less to eat when one food falls; the set of foods that fall when one eater rises — four living things, two keyed
- Type 10 (medium · MCQ, the NUM4 set · 017): two links away, what happens — more / fewer / the same / you cannot tell
- Type 11 (medium · MCQ · 017): which living thing changes at the first (or second) link — four living things
- Type 12 (hard · MCQ (NUM4) and one multi · 017): three links away, what happens; two links away on a drawn web; the set that ends up fewer after three links — more / fewer / the same / you cannot tell; four living things
- Type 13 (hard · MCQ · 017): the correct reason for an outcome two links away, the middle link left unsaid — four single-statement reasons
- Type 14 (hard · typed · 017): how many links one living thing is from another — LINKS accept (the number, "N links", "N links away")
Three lessons for three atoms, one real American food web each, in Miss Zamora's class with Bea, Alvin and Boaz.
Bea's class walks a Kansas prairie and Miss Zamora tells them who eats what, so L01 turns six sentences into one drawing: write each name once, one arrow for each sentence, from the food to the one that eats it (Grade 3's arrow, word for word).
Alvin's grandpa's pond in Minnesota loses most of its minnows to a sickness, so L02 follows the arrows: forward to the herons and the bass (fewer), back to the tadpoles (more) — forward, the same way; back, the opposite way.
Boaz watches elk by a river in Yellowstone, where people hunted out every wolf a hundred years ago, so L03 traces the ripple three links — more elk, fewer willows, fewer beavers — and then tells what happened when the wolves came back in 1995.
Nothing is coined: "food web" is Grade 4's, "predator" and "prey" are Topic 23's (recapped in one line in Topic 23's own words). No belief is stated or tested: the register names none for these atoms.
The non-author review is applied (two wrong bank keys, three bank items that counted a woodpecker's nest as a food-web link, one quiz item that named a drawing not on the screen, one word — "link" — used everywhere and defined nowhere, two rule cards that overflowed, one item web whose arrow had no shaft). Every gate is at its stated result. The blind read by two cold readers is next; pictures are placeholders until the reads are done.
Questions for James
none — no finding changes what a student learns in a way your rules do not already settle; the calls the author made (three scenes; forward / back as a two-branch routine; the fixed more / fewer set; predator and prey recapped, not coined) stand and are recorded in the review.
Rulings made in the review (yours to reverse)
Applied without asking
Keys and drawings: PP-43 keyed "fewer" where three back-links give "more" (fewer gulls → more crabs → fewer mussels → more tiny floating plants) — key now "more". PP-38's drawing left off a different arrow from the one its key named — the drawing now matches the key, and the list names the grouse's food too. PP-37, PP-41 and PP-47 counted "woodpeckers nest in trees with healthy bark" as a food-web link; a nest is not an eats-sentence (L01's rule: one arrow per sentence of who eats what), so the Vermont chain is now fisher → porcupine → young maples' bark → deer (the deer eat the twigs), and PP-41's fourth option is a living thing no arrow joins (owls and mice), which the change does not reach. L01-q9 said "Here is a finished food web" with no drawing and leaned on knowing an egret is a bird; it now describes the card ("the egret, a tall wading bird") and asks the same thing. Two multi-selects and one bank item asked which living things "end up with more / fewer" — two readings beside PP-39's "have less to eat" — and now ask "which living things are there more of / fewer of". Three NUM4 items keyed "fewer" of an amount (bark; corn roots) and now ask a count (healthy young maples; corn plants). One typo (PP-36). Two rule cards (L02's rule and the summary still) ran past their frames and are four lines each; the Idaho item web's grouse → wolverine arrow was a bare head and the wolverine card moved. One duplicate line cut in L01. The predator line and the recalled definitions now use Topic 23's words. Type sheet aligned with the bank.
Every attached question stands alone; every sentence a student reads has a noun subject and a verb; "so" opens only a deduction; the forward / back pair keeps one frame everywhere; every bank item maps to one atom; the fixed more / fewer / the same / none at all set keys only more or fewer, as the science demands (declared exempt from the key-tell checker and named in the record).
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 you. Reversing any of the four rulings above is a line or a handful of strings, named under each. The blind read of blind/2026-10-08-reviewed/ by two cold readers is the next step; the picture pass (three photos, four cartoons) follows the reads; the video batch is built and checked and waits for your word on the Life strand.
What the reviews found, and what changed
The guidance, questions and accuracy review (8 October, non-author)
The science is right and the routine is taught cleanly three times, each lesson on a bigger web. Nineteen findings: five Must-fix (two wrong bank keys — PP-38's drawing against its key, PP-43's third flip dropped; the woodpecker nest counted as a link in three bank items; a quiz stem naming a drawing not on the screen; a typo), twelve Worth fixing (the undefined "link"; one heron against "fewer herons"; "went down" in a pond; "everywhere"; "end up with more"; "fewer" of an amount; the predator line and definitions not in Topic 23's words; the Yellowstone hedge; a duplicate line; the type sheet's stale why-lines; the bank's header count), two Simplification-leave (the five-row table for six sentences; the rule card under the rule box). All Must-fix and Worth-fixing rows applied. The author's four structural calls stand. The accuracy pass confirmed every eats-pair, the arrow convention, and the Yellowstone dates (wolves gone by 1926, back in 1995); "minnows eat tadpoles" is the register's own example and stays. No belief is stated anywhere, as the register asks. The ten Grade 4 faults were looked for one by one: "link" (bald jargon) and three vague frames were the hits, now fixed; no invented belief, no bare verdict, no lettered case, no quoted-child opener.
The figure review (8 October, non-author)
All 39 renders opened, and every article, quiz, practice and bank page at phone width. Every web's arrows run from the food's card edge to the eater's; MORE / FEWER / GONE chips sit clear of every arrow (beside the card where an arrow leaves its top); no two cards touch (the guard reports 13 layouts clean). Three fixes: L02's rule card and the summary still ran past their frames (four lines each now); the Idaho item web's grouse → wolverine arrow rendered as a bare head between near-touching cards (the wolverine card moved up); PP-38's "missing arrow" drawing now leaves off the arrow its key names. Blind descriptions carry the cards and "from X to Y" arrows only — no verdict word.
The bank, in brief
51 items in content/G5T26_pp100_bank.py: 44 four-option MCQs, four typed counts (links away; arrows into a card), three multi-selects. Per atom: LIF5-015 16 (9 easy, 5 medium, 2 hard) · LIF5-016 17 (6 / 9 / 2) · LIF5-017 18 (0 / 8 / 10). Easy 15, medium 22, hard 14, sorted easy to hard and rising with the atom's place. MCQ keys A 13 · B 14 · C 9 · D 8. Fourteen question types, one exemplar each on the type sheet. The key-tell checker reads 0 of 97. Draw constraints (⟂) for the shared Idaho and marsh drawings and the five repeated text chains are on the type sheet.
The records, in full
The non-author review and fix pass (8 October 2026)
Skill: review-lesson (Role B guidance reviewer and Role C fix pass; Role A, the blind key read, is NOT run here — two cold readers follow) → review-questions, review-figures, review-accuracy @ cca3af6
Grade 5 Topic 26 — How a change ripples through a food web — non-author review and fix pass (8 October 2026)
1. The takeaway, in plain words
The topic teaches the right thing in the right order: draw the web from who-eats-what sentences, follow one arrow forward or back, then chain the links. The three scenes (a Kansas prairie, a Minnesota pond, Yellowstone's wolves) are real, the arrow convention is Grade 3's word for word, and no belief is invented. Three things would have hurt a student and are now fixed: two bank keys were wrong (PP-38's drawing left off a different arrow from the one its key named; PP-43 keyed "fewer" where three back-links give "more"), and three bank items counted a nesting habit as a food-web link (woodpeckers nesting in healthy trees), which the topic's own rule — one arrow per eats-sentence — says is not a link. Beside those: one quiz item said "Here is a finished food web" with no drawing on the screen; the pond lesson set up ONE heron and then said "fewer herons"; "went down" in a pond scene reads as sinking; "link" was used in every rule and item and defined nowhere; two rule cards overflowed their frames; the Idaho item web drew the grouse's arrow as a bare head. All applied. Articles after the pass: 373 / 375 / 339 words (each section feeds an item or the rule; one line each in §10). Every gate is at its stated result. Nothing here needs James.
2. Role A — the blind key read
Not run by this reviewer (the task bars it). Bundle re-cut after the fixes: blind/2026-10-08-reviewed/ — the bundler's count line: 86 mcq, 4 text (0 numeric), 1 frq, 0 order, 5 multi — adversarial rows: 4 — held: 96; every module held is bundled (no shortfall). CHANGED_IDS.md in that folder lists the 22 ids whose wording, options, key or drawing moved since the author's bundle — ids only, no key text.
3. Role B — the guidance review (one row per finding; checks with no finding listed as clear)
| # | Part | Location | Check | The fault | Verdict | The rewrite (applied unless marked) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| B-1 | L01 | article, "Bea's list" | B2 nothing that does no work | "The hawk eats prairie dogs and meadowlarks, so the hawk's row names two foods." said the caption's sentence again, and Step 2 says it a third time | Worth fixing | line cut (387 → 373 words) |
| B-2 | L01 | q9 | B3 never refer to a figure not on the screen; B4 distractors name only what the student has met | "Here is a finished food web for a marsh" with no drawing; "egret" never described; "The egret is a plant" needs the student to know an egret is a bird | Must-fix | "A finished food web for a marsh has a card for the egret, a tall wading bird. No arrow points into the egret card. What does the drawing say about the egret?" — options: Nothing eats the egret. / The egret eats nothing on the list. (key) / The egret eats every living thing on the list. |
| B-3 | L02 | headache, article a2/a4, script beat 1, closing return | B1 the scene is the case; Say the specific thing | the scene set up "a heron and a few bass", then the lesson said "fewer herons" — a change in NUMBER needs numbers in the scene | Worth fixing | "herons and bass eat the minnows"; "what happens to the herons that ate the minnows?"; script "herons and bass eat minnows … What happens to the herons"; closing "So the herons at Alvin's pond go hungry, and there are fewer of them, while there are more tadpoles than ever." |
| B-4 | L02 | article a12, a17 | B3 no figurative verb a young reader takes literally (James, 25 Sep 2026: "leak", "lift") | "The minnows went down" / "their food went up" — in a POND, "went down" reads as sank | Worth fixing | "There are fewer minnows, and there are fewer of the animals that eat them." / "There are fewer minnows, and there are more of the tadpoles they eat." |
| B-5 | L02, L03, practice, bank | L03-q6, L03-q9, PR-09, PR-11 model, PP-33, PP-34, PP-37 | same as B-4 (vague frame, root-cause 6) | "the otters go down", "the loons go down", "the catfish go down", "the gulls go down", "the fishers go down", "the plant roots go down" | Worth fixing | "there are fewer otters" and so on, the lesson's own words (more / fewer) |
| B-6 | L02 | closing return | B3 Say the specific thing | "the tadpoles the minnows ate are everywhere" | Worth fixing | "there are more tadpoles than ever" |
| B-7 | L02 | article (first line of "Follow the arrow forward"), script beat 2 | B3 every term is explained before it is used (root-cause 1, jargon dropped bald) | "link" carries the L02 and L03 rules and 20 items ("the next link", "two links away", "how many links") and no sentence said what a link is; Grade 3 Topic 41 and Grade 4 Topic 35 never used the word | Worth fixing | article: "Each arrow in the web is one link. The next link is the living thing at the other end of the arrow." Script: "Each arrow is one link." added to beat 2; beat 1 trimmed ("A sickness killed most of the minnows.") — 150 spoken words, the cap |
| B-8 | L02 | article, the predator line | B3 one word for one thing; the brief: an earlier rule sentence is reused word for word | "so the heron is a predator" against Topic 23's "The hawk is the predator, and the mouse is its prey."; recalled_terms paraphrased Topic 23's definitions | Worth fixing | "The heron hunts and eats the minnow, so the heron is the predator, and the minnow is its prey."; recalled_terms now Topic 23's: "an animal that hunts and eats another animal" / "the animal that a predator hunts and eats" |
| B-9 | L03 | article a28 | review-accuracy step 1 (a majority word is a count; the hedge) | "fewer elk, more willows, and more beavers" states the recovery as whole; the Park Service's own account is partial (willows and beavers recovered in places) | Worth fixing | "The ripple ran the other way: fewer elk, and in many places more willows and more beavers." |
| B-10 | L03, bank | L03-q8, PP-40, PP-41 | B4 stems set a complete task; two readings | "Which living things end up with more / fewer?" reads as "have more to eat" — PP-39 in the same bank asks exactly that ("have less to eat") | Worth fixing | "By the end, which living things are there more of?"; "at the next link, which living things are there fewer of?"; "By the end, which living things are there fewer of?" |
| B-11 | bank | PP-37, PP-41, PP-47 | review-accuracy: the course against itself (L01's rule: one arrow per sentence of who eats what) | "woodpeckers nest in trees with healthy bark" counted as a food-web LINK (second link; a thing that ends up fewer; "3 links from the fisher") — a nest is not an eats-sentence, so an ecologist and the course's own rule both strike it; PP-41's fourth option "the fishers' food" was a self-made label for the porcupines | Must-fix | the Vermont chain is now three eats-sentences: the fisher eats porcupines, porcupines eat the bark of young maple trees, deer eat the young maples' twigs (PP-11 and PP-28 take the same bottom link); PP-41 adds "and owls eat mice" so its fourth option is a living thing no arrow joins (the change does not reach it) |
| B-12 | bank | PP-11, PP-28, PP-31 | B3 plain words; the NUM4 set keyed "fewer" of an AMOUNT ("the amount of tree bark", "corn roots left") | "fewer" bark is not English a ten-year-old writes; the quiz says "less meadow grass" correctly | Worth fixing | the stems ask a count: "the number of healthy young maples"; "the number of corn plants" |
| B-13 | bank | PP-38 | B6 the drawing shows what the text says (key against drawing) | the drawing (pp_web_idaho_missing) left off the grouse → wolverine arrow and drew chipmunk → wolverine; the key named the chipmunk sentence; the drawing also carried plants → grouse, which the list did not | Must-fix | drawing: the chipmunk → wolverine arrow is the one left off; the list gains "the grouse eats mountain plants" (five sentences, as the hb line now says); options: moose / grouse / wolverine-grouse sentences beside the key |
| B-14 | bank | PP-43 | review-accuracy step 3 (a key rewards a wrong claim) | fewer gulls → more crabs → fewer mussels → fewer mussels eat fewer plants → MORE tiny floating plants; the key said "fewer" and the why's third line contradicted its first two | Must-fix | key "more"; why line 3: "fewer mussels eat fewer plants, so more tiny floating plants" |
| B-15 | bank | PP-36 why | typo | "snakees" | Must-fix | "snakes" |
| B-16 | figures | rule_next, summary_still | B6 / review-figures 17: content inside its frame | the third rule line and the summary's first two lines ran past the card on both sides (seen on the built L02 page and the summary still) | Must-fix | four lines each; the summary card 560 wide; re-rendered and opened |
| B-17 | figures | pp_web_idaho, _wrong, _missing | review-figures 3 / 9: clear at a glance | the grouse → wolverine arrow rendered as a bare head (the cards sat 55 units apart): PP-19, 21, 23, 35 read that arrow | Must-fix | wolverine card moved to (95, 55), grouse to (235, 165); guards clean; opened |
| B-18 | records | TYPES_G5T26.md | records tell the truth | three exemplar why-lines printed the first draft's three-slot form ("Back, to the food, the change goes…") that the author's parallel fix had removed from the bank; the PP-38 note said "four-sentence list" | Worth fixing | aligned with the bank |
| B-19 | records | bank header comment | counts | "52 items: 45 MCQs" for a 51 / 44 bank | Worth fixing | corrected |
| — | all | — | B1 one atom per part; forest, trees, forest; prerequisites before use; concrete before abstract; the article narrates its scene | clear — each lesson opens on its scene, the narrator asks, the routine is worked on the scene, the rule comes last, the return re-presents the scene; "Start at the wolf. Follow the arrow back" are the routine's own steps, not staging | Not an error | — |
| — | all | — | B2 sentence atomisation | clear beyond B-1, B-4, B-6 — one idea a line, named noun subjects, cause before effect, the link stated ("fewer minnows eat tadpoles, so there are more tadpoles") | Not an error | — |
| — | all | — | B4 check sequence; stands alone; recall before use | clear — type (b) scaffold → bare in every quiz; the scaffold stems restate the previous link's outcome by design (S22 WARN); the recall bank sits before the video that needs it | Not an error | — |
| — | all | — | B5 fb ≤ 30 words, why ≤ 60, the causal chain only | clear | Not an error | — |
| — | all | — | B7 no meta language; glossary carries no provenance | clear — terms is empty; recalled_terms are student definitions | Not an error | — |
| — | L02 | q2 / q6 / q8 and L01-q2 | B4 no item gives another away | the loon-and-perch pair recurs (L01-q2 the arrow; L02-q6 more perch; L02-q8 fewer perch) — fluency repetition with a varied surface, the keys differ | Not an error | — |
| — | L03 | q4 | B4 second defensible option | the desert web has two paths from the rattlesnake to the plants (through the mice; through the hawk and the jackrabbit) — both give "fewer" | Not an error | — |
| — | L01 | eats table | B6 the drawing shows what the text says | five rows for "six sentences" — the caption says the hawk's row names two | Simplification-leave | — |
| — | all | rule cards on the article pages | B6 | the SVG rule card repeats the rule box above it and shrinks on a phone — the course's convention on every topic | Simplification-leave | — |
4. Role B — the author's structural calls, judged
| Call | Verdict | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Three scenes, not one running scene | stands | each atom needs a bigger web than the last (six cards to build; one change both ways; three links); one class, one child per lesson, one teacher named — the brief's "one character carries a scene" is met per lesson |
Forward / back as a two-branch routine, no sequences block | stands | nothing is sorted: both branches are positives applied to one scene, and L03 chains them; write-lesson's Step 1 asks for a sequence only where a rule judges cases; S118 is silent |
| NUM4 keys only "more" or "fewer" | stands | a neighbour always moves one way; "the same" and "none at all" are the two real misreadings (the change does not reach; the change wipes the neighbour out); declared in KEY_TELL_EXEMPT_SETS; check_key_tells 0 of 97 |
| Predator / prey recapped from Topic 23, not coined | stands, aligned | Topic 23 L05 coins them in the frame ("When one animal hunts and eats another, the hunter is called the predator, and the animal it eats is called the prey."); L02's one line now mirrors its application sentence word for word (B-8); no recall item added — the video route never says the pair, and no item leans on it |
| Articles 387 / 351 / 335 | stand, now 373 / 375 / 339 | L01: Steps 1–3 feed q1–q9 and bank types 2–3, the two-chains lines feed PR-12; L02: the "other way" section feeds q6 and q8 and the direction table, and the link line (B-7) is the one sentence the whole topic leaned on; L03: "It really happened" is the capstone's return (the headache's real answer) and feeds web_ys_back; each has a subtitle or figure every ≤ 8 idea lines |
5. review-questions — one row per item (no fault unless stated; checks run: 1–12, 13–22, round 3–5, 23–83 as they apply)
Set-level, first: check_key_tells.py → KEY TELLS: 0 of 97 MCQs flagged (fixed sets NUM4 / WAY4 exempt) before and after. Design-check-sequence type (b) scaffold → bare found in every quiz and matched (check 13). Video questions as one set (check 34): A B A A B B — B 3 of 6. Term-recall item (PR-12, "food web") sits last in the practice set (check 41). No claim items; no stated belief (check 61 — none to source). Every typed item is a produced count with a generated accept list (COUNT / LINKS) and a stem that names the class ("Type how many links…", "Type how many arrows…") (checks 40, 53, 64, 80). Every hard item carries its hb line (check 50); multi-selects: five, each a set answer that does not split (check 48). Every bank item names a type on the sheet (check 52); freshness grep re-performed (check 50): no lesson, quiz, attached, practice or recall scene noun in the bank — 0 hits (the new Vermont nouns "maple", "deer", "owls eat mice" checked: "owl" and "mice" appear in L02's attached question and L03-q5 as a text pair in a FOREST, here an unlinked pair in a Vermont forest — the design move differs: there the pair is the tested link, here it is the living thing the change does NOT reach).
| Item | Fault(s) | Check | Acted | Rewrite |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| L01-q1 … q4 | none | — | — | — |
| L01-q5 | none (29-word stem: a drawn web checked against a stated list needs the list) | 20 | not acted | — |
| L01-q6, q7, q8 | none | — | — | — |
| L01-q9 | figure named, none on screen; "egret" unexplained; plant distractor needs outside knowledge | 10, 21, 74 | acted | see B-2 |
| L01-V | none | — | — | — |
| L02-q1 … q4 (scaffold) | none; q4 states "the mayflies are the trout's food" as the scaffold's given — by design | 29 | not acted | — |
| L02-q5 … q8 | none | — | — | — |
| L02-q9 | none | — | — | — |
| L02-V | none | — | — | — |
| L03-q1 … q3 (scaffold) | none; q2 and q3 carry the previous link's outcome as the given (S22 WARN, by design) | 17 | not acted | — |
| L03-q4, q5 | none | — | — | — |
| L03-q6 | "the otters go down" | 20 (vague verb) | acted | "there are fewer otters" |
| L03-q7 | none | — | — | — |
| L03-q8 | "end up with more" has two readings | 3, 65 | acted | "By the end, which living things are there more of?" |
| L03-q9 | "the loons go down" | 20 | acted | "there are fewer loons" |
| L03-V | none | — | — | — |
| SUMMARY-Q1 … Q3 | none | — | — | — |
| PR-01 … PR-08 | none | — | — | — |
| PR-09 | "the otters go down" | 20 | acted | "there are fewer otters" |
| PR-10 | none (the register's own decomposer example; two links through the soil, which is not a living thing) | 70 | not acted | — |
| PR-11 (FRQ) | model: "go down" twice | 20 | acted | "there are fewer gopher snakes"; "there are fewer plant roots" |
| PR-12 | none | — | — | — |
| RB-1 … RB-6 (recall bank) | none | — | — | — |
| PP-1 … PP-10 | none (PP-1/2/3's third-card distractors name an animal not in the stem — the absurd tier, kept) | 74 | not acted | — |
| PP-11 | "fewer" of an amount | 11, 79c | acted | "the number of healthy young maples" |
| PP-12 … PP-27 | none | — | — | — |
| PP-28 | "fewer" of an amount | 11 | acted | as PP-11, two links |
| PP-29, PP-30 | none | — | — | — |
| PP-31 | "the amount of corn roots left" keyed "fewer" | 11 | acted | "the number of corn plants" |
| PP-32 | none | — | — | — |
| PP-33, PP-34 | "go down" | 20 | acted | "There are fewer catfish / gulls" |
| PP-35 | none | — | — | — |
| PP-36 | typo in the why | 12 | acted | "snakes" |
| PP-37 | the nesting "link" | accuracy (course against itself) | acted | deer eat the young maples' twigs; key "the young maples" |
| PP-38 | key against drawing; a drawn arrow not on the list | 10, 56 | acted | see B-13 |
| PP-39 | none | — | — | — |
| PP-40 | "end up with fewer" | 3 | acted | "at the next link, which living things are there fewer of?" |
| PP-41 | the nesting "link"; "the fishers' food" a self-made label | 21, accuracy | acted | see B-11 |
| PP-42 | none | — | — | — |
| PP-43 | wrong key | key check | acted | key "more" |
| PP-44, PP-45, PP-46 | none | — | — | — |
| PP-47 | the nesting "link" | accuracy | acted | "how many links the deer are from the fisher" (3) |
| PP-48 … PP-51 | none | — | — | — |
Key letters (check 18, after the pass): bank MCQ A 13 · B 14 · C 9 · D 8 (none above 35 %); quizzes L01 A B C B A B · multi BCD · C B, L02 A B B A A B B A A, L03 A B B A B B A · multi BCD · A (no four alternate); practice A A A B C B A B B B · frq · A; recall bank A A B A B A. Depth after the pass: easy 15, medium 22, hard 14; per atom LIF5-015 16 (9 / 5 / 2), LIF5-016 17 (6 / 9 / 2), LIF5-017 18 (0 / 8 / 10).
6. review-figures — every render opened (39), and the built pages at 420 px
Pages opened: topic home, L01 / L02 / L03 article, L01 / L02 / L03 quiz, L02 script, summary, practice, PP100 (tiles of the whole page). The page forces one colour scheme (a prefers-color-scheme: dark context rendered it light), so one shot per page suffices. check_svg_ids.py PASS (0 ids). Blind comments (web_blind) list cards and "from X to Y" arrows only — grepped for fewer / more / wrong / missing / gone / same / opposite: 0 hits (check 35).
| Figure | Where | Finding | Check | Acted |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| prairie_cartoon, prairie_dog_photo, pond_cartoon, heron_photo, yellowstone_cartoon, elk_willow_photo, intro_cartoon | L01–L03, intro | placeholders with their briefs; no finding (the picture pass is owed) | 1 | not acted |
| eats_table | L01 | five rows, the hawk's names two foods; headers in full | table guard | no finding |
| web_prairie_cards, web_prairie_step1, web_prairie_step2, web_prairie_hawk, web_prairie | L01 | every arrow from the food's card edge to the eater's; halos under the arrows named; chips clear of arrows; legend under each | 3, 4, 12 | no finding |
| rule_build | L01 | fits its card | 17 | no finding |
| web_pond, web_pond_eaters, web_pond_food, web_pond_up | L02 | chips sit beside the minnow and tadpole (an arrow leaves the top), above the heron and bass; halos on the followed arrows; MORE green, FEWER red as the register says | 3, 12 | no finding |
| direction_table | L02 | two rows, headers in full | — | no finding |
| rule_next | L02 | third line ran past the card on both sides (seen on the built page) | 17 | acted: four lines; re-opened, fits |
| web_ys, web_ys_step1, web_ys_step2, web_ys_step3, web_ys_back | L03 | the wolf card crossed corner to corner with GONE above (Grade 3's convention), the name still legible; chips clear of every arrow | 3, 12 | no finding |
| rule_ripple | L03 | fits (w = 520) | 17 | no finding |
| summary_still | summary | first two lines ran past the card | 17 | acted: four shorter lines, w = 560; re-opened, fits |
| web_q_stream, web_q_stream_wrong | L01-q5, L02-q1–4, L03-q7 | the wrong-way arrow (otter → trout) reads clearly head-down; BEFORE state only | 10 | no finding |
| web_q_desert, web_q_desert_missing | L01-q6, L03-q4, PR-08 | the missing arrow is an absence, not a mark | 10 | no finding |
| web_q_backyard, web_q_lake, web_q_meadow | PR-02, RB, L02-q7/8, L03-q1–3 | clean; no chip, no verdict | 10 | no finding |
| pp_web_idaho, pp_web_idaho_wrong | PP-16, 19, 21, 23, 35 | the grouse → wolverine arrow was a bare head between near-touching cards | 3, 9 | acted: wolverine (95, 55), grouse (235, 165); web_guard and card_gap_guard clean on all 13 layouts; re-opened |
| pp_web_idaho_missing | PP-38 | the arrow left off did not match the key's sentence | 10 (figure–text agreement) | acted: chipmunk → wolverine left off; re-opened |
| pp_web_marsh, pp_web_marsh_missing | PP-17, 18, 20, 22, 51 | clean | 10 | no finding |
7. review-accuracy — the science
Reference frame: NGSS 5-LS2-1, TEKS 5.12B; the LIF5 register (LIF5-015/016/017 and their cross notes); the National Park Service's Yellowstone wolf pages; standard natural-history diets.
| Location | Claim | Verdict | Severity | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| L01 arrow convention | "In a food chain drawing, the arrow points from the food to the animal that eats it." | Not an error — Grade 3 Topic 41's sentence, word for word; drawn so on all 13 webs | — | — |
| L01 prairie web | hawks eat prairie dogs and meadowlarks; meadowlarks eat grasshoppers; coyotes eat prairie dogs | Not an error (red-tailed hawk, western meadowlark, coyote diets) | — | — |
| L02 pond web | minnows eat tadpoles | Simplification — the register's own example (LIF5-015, LIF5-016); fathead minnows take eggs and hatchling tadpoles, not large ones | Leave | — |
| L02 rule | forward the same way, back the opposite way | Not an error at this level (single-step, as the cross note says; the next-link direction of a consumer–resource pair) | — | — |
| L02 a28 (old) | "fewer herons" from one heron | Not an error in science; a scene fault (B-3) | — | applied |
| L03 history | wolves hunted out about a hundred years ago (last pack killed 1926); returned 1995; elk herds grew; young willows browsed down; beavers rare on the northern range | Not an error (NPS) | — | — |
| L03 a28 | "fewer elk, more willows, and more beavers" after 1995 | Simplification — the recovery is real but partial and debated in detail (willow recovery patchy; beavers also moved in from upstream releases) | Worth fixing | "and in many places more willows and more beavers" — applied |
| L03 web | grass and willow stand for all the elk's food | Simplification, defensible | Leave | — |
| L03 beavers eat willow | Not an error (bark and twigs) | — | — | — |
| bank PP-37/41/47 (old) | woodpeckers' nests as a food-web link | Confirmed error against the course's own rule (one arrow per eats-sentence); an ecologist would not draw a nest site as a trophic link | Essential (keys rested on it) | the deer-and-twigs link — applied |
| bank PP-43 (old) | three back-links from fewer gulls give "fewer" plants | Confirmed error (the third flip was dropped) | Essential | key "more" — applied |
| bank diets | pelican–fish, porcupine–bark, badger–cottontail, ghost crab–sand flea, brown bear–salmon, sidewinder–kangaroo rat, rat snake–chipmunk, osprey–whitefish, pike–bluegill, bat–moth, fisher–porcupine, catfish–sunfish, skunk–grub, kingfisher–small fish, water bug–dead leaves, mussel / water flea–tiny floating plants, mink–bluegill and small pike, falcon–quail and cottontail, wolverine–grouse and chipmunk, ibis–water beetle, alligator–ibis and muskrat, deer–maple twigs | Not an error | — | — |
| intro | sea otters, urchins, kelp | Not an error (the classic cascade) | — | — |
| beliefs | none stated | Not an error — the register names none for these atoms | — | — |
Deliberately omitted (so the next reader does not re-report them): "population"; the names of the paired interactions (grades 6-8); density-dependence and timescales (a "year" is the stem's convenience); indirect effects along a second path (every drawn web is chosen so both paths agree); the debate over how much of Yellowstone's willow recovery the wolves caused; decomposers inside a drawn web (Grade 4's convention: beside it, no arrow).
8. The ten Grade 4 faults, looked for here
| Pattern | Found? |
|---|---|
| 1 jargon dropped bald | "link" (B-7) — fixed; "food web", "predator", "prey" are recalled in their owners' sentences |
| 2 invented misconceptions | none |
| 3 a verdict with no question | none |
| 4 "so" before a told fact | none ("So Bea draws one arrow…" and "So there are more tadpoles" are deductions; the recap openers stand) |
| 5 lettered cases | none |
| 6 vague phrasing | "went down / go down", "everywhere", "end up with more" (B-4, B-5, B-6, B-10) — fixed |
| 7 heat as a travelling object | not applicable |
| 8 contrasts not parallel | clear — the forward / back pair keeps one frame everywhere |
| 9 convenience terms recapped and tested | none ("link" is plain English, now defined; it is not recapped as a term) |
| 10 the first-person ban | not applicable |
| 11 quoted student openers | none — the narrator asks over each scene |
9. Items changed (old → new); keys named here only, never in the bundle folder
- L01-09 stem and options rewritten (B-2); key position unchanged (index 1).
- L03-06, L03-09, PR-09, PP-33, PP-34: "go down" → "there are fewer …"; keys unchanged.
- L03-08, PP-40, PP-41: "end up with more / fewer" → "are there more / fewer of"; keys unchanged except PP-41 (new option set: the porcupines / the young maples / the deer / the mice; keys the young maples and the deer).
- PR-11 model: two "go down" lines reworded; the award unchanged.
- PP-11, PP-28: bark → "the number of healthy young maples"; key "fewer" unchanged.
- PP-31: corn roots → "the number of corn plants"; key "fewer" unchanged.
- PP-36: typo in the why.
- PP-37: chain rewritten; key "the young maples" (was "the tree bark"), position 2 unchanged.
- PP-38: list of five sentences; options moose / grouse / wolverine-grouse; key "The wolverine eats chipmunks." unchanged; drawing changed to match.
- PP-43: key "fewer" → "more" (NUM4 index 1 → 0); why line 3 rewritten.
- PP-47: "the woodpecker" → "the deer"; accept LINKS(3) unchanged.
- PP-19, 21, 23, 35: no text change; their drawing (
pp_web_idaho) re-laid out. - Lesson prose: L01 one line cut; L02 the herons plural (4 strings), the link line, a12 / a17, the predator line, the closing return, script beats 1 and 2; L03 a28 hedge.
recalled_termsaligned with Topic 23.
10. Gates, before and after
| Gate | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
build_tools_check_topic.py | 0 FAIL, 66 WARN; S46 B=0 C=0 D=0 | 0 FAIL, 68 WARN; S46 B=0 C=0 D=0 (the two new WARNs: S8 on L02 beat 2, now three sentences — the link sentence, the step, its outcome; kept, one picture state; S4 on L03-q8 at 37 words — the four-sentence web the multi-select needs) |
build_tools_check_terms.py | 0 declared terms, no hits | same |
grade5/check_g5_articles.py | 0 FAIL; articles 387 / 351 / 335; scripts 149 / 149 / 147 | 0 FAIL; articles 373 / 375 / 339; scripts 149 / 150 / 147; intro 120; summary 123 |
check_key_tells.py | 0 of 97 flagged | 0 of 97 flagged |
check_svg_ids.py | PASS | PASS (39 figures, 0 ids) |
check_lessons.py --adapter tools/check_adapter_g5.json | 0 FAIL, 55 WARN, S118 silent | 0 FAIL, 58 WARN, S118 silent |
| figure guards | 12 layouts clean | 13 layouts clean (IDAHO_MISSING added to the report) |
| site | built | built: /tmp/g5t26_review.html (3 lessons, 12 practice, 51 pp100, 39 figures); every article and quiz route, the summary, the practice set and the bank opened at 420 px |
| blind bundle | blind/2026-10-08/ | blind/2026-10-08-reviewed/: 86 mcq, 4 text, 1 frq, 5 multi; 96 held; CHANGED_IDS.md (22 ids) |
| video batch | 5 videos ✓ | rebuilt: handoff/G5T26/videos/batch_G5T26.json, check_brief.py all five ✓, no finding; "strand" 0. Not sent. |
Article counts: L01 387 → 373 (one duplicate line cut); L02 351 → 375 (the link definition, 20 words; the herons plural); L03 335 → 339 (the hedge). Why each stands as one lesson: L01's three steps are the routine and each feeds its items; L02's "other way" section is the second branch of the routine the quiz tests both ways; L03's "It really happened" is the capstone's return and the truth the Yellowstone scene was chosen for.
11. What is left
- The blind read by two cold readers of
blind/2026-10-08-reviewed/(Role A), then adjudication; the keys named in §9 live only in this record and the sequestered JSON. - The picture pass (3 photos, 4 cartoons) after the reads.
- The batch waits for James's word (Life strand sample rule).
- Nothing for James: no finding changes what a student learns in a way the rules do not already settle.
The build record (v1, 8 October 2026)
Skill: course-build → write-lesson (L01 routine: build the web, worked step by step; L02 routine: the next link, forward and back; L03 the capstone routine: the ripple traced link by link) → design-check-sequence (type (b) in every lesson), 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, narrative type); write-video-script (three lesson scripts, the elementary micro-lesson anatomy); write-summary (the summary video); review-figures (author self-check on 39 renders and three built routes; the non-author pass is owed) @ cca3af6
Grade 5 Topic 26 — How a change ripples through a food web — build record (v1, 8 October 2026)
What this is, in plain words
Three lessons on three real American food webs. Bea's class visits a Kansas prairie, and Bea turns the ranger's six sentences of who eats what into one drawing (L01: write each name once, one arrow per sentence, from the food to the one that eats it). Alvin's grandpa's pond in Minnesota loses most of its minnows to a sickness, and the lesson follows the arrows: forward to the heron and the bass (fewer) and back to the tadpoles (more) — the same way forward, the opposite way back (L02). Boaz watches elk in Yellowstone, where people hunted out every wolf a hundred years ago; the lesson traces the ripple three links — more elk, fewer willows, fewer beavers — and tells what happened when the wolves came back in 1995 (L03, the capstone). Nothing is coined: "food web" is Grade 4's, "predator" and "prey" are Topic 23's, recapped in one line each. No belief is stated or tested: the register names none for these atoms. Every quiz, practice and bank item runs on a different web (an Oregon stream, an Arizona desert, an Ohio backyard, a Michigan lake, a Colorado meadow, an Idaho mountain forest, a Florida marsh, and twenty-odd named pairs).
Counts
Three lessons; articles 387 / 351 / 335 words (23 / 22 / 19 idea lines, 8 figures each, a subtitle or figure every ≤ 8 idea lines); scripts 149 / 149 / 147 spoken words; intro 120; summary 123; quizzes 9 / 9 / 9 items (two multi-selects); three attached lesson questions and three summary questions (keys A B A A B B); practice 12 items (3 retrievals from Grades 3 and 4, 1 FRQ, the "food web" recognition item last); recall bank 6 items; PP100 bank 51 items (44 four-option MCQs, 4 typed counts, 3 multi-selects) — LIF5-015 16 (9 easy, 5 medium, 2 hard), LIF5-016 17 (6 / 9 / 2), LIF5-017 18 (0 / 8 / 10); MCQ keys A 12 · B 15 · C 9 · D 8; 39 figures (32 SVG by code, 3 photo placeholders, 4 cartoon placeholders).
Structural decisions (in place of a blueprint)
Lesson order and titles. The architecture row's order, LIF5-015 → 016 → 017, one lesson each, the capstone last:
- L01 Draw a food web from who eats what (LIF5-015, Routine: the construct direction owed since Grade 3; three worked steps on the prairie; the convention stated once in Grade 3's words and kept in every drawing).
- L02 Predict what happens to the next link (LIF5-016, Routine, single-step only as the cross note says: the two directions on one pond web, each shown WHAT then WHY, then the same web with the change the other way).
- L03 Trace the ripple through the web, link by link (LIF5-017, Routine, the capstone: one change traced three links with the direction at each step, then the true history).
The running scenes. One class (Miss Zamora's), but three places, one per lesson, because the atom sequence needs three webs of rising size: the prairie (six cards, six arrows: grasshoppers and prairie dogs eat the grass; meadowlarks eat grasshoppers; coyotes eat prairie dogs; hawks eat prairie dogs and meadowlarks — red-tailed hawks take prairie dogs and meadowlarks, meadowlarks take grasshoppers, coyotes take prairie dogs), the pond (pond weed → tadpole → minnow → heron and bass; the register's own example), and the Yellowstone river valley (grass and willow → elk → wolf; willow → beaver). The Yellowstone history is the National Park Service's: wolves gone by about 1926, elk herds grew, young willows browsed down, beavers rare on the northern range; wolves returned in 1995 and willows and beavers recovered in places. The article says "more beavers", not a number. One dataset per scene; each web is drawn once and reused in every figure of its lesson.
Headache scenes and who asks. L01: the class on the prairie trail, Bea writing the six sentences; the narrator asks ("So how can one drawing show all six sentences at once?"). L02: the pond web and the sickness among the minnows; the narrator asks two questions, one per direction. L03: elk by the river, the wolves hunted out; the narrator asks ("So what happened to the willows, and to the beavers that eat willow?"). No student or teacher voices a claim anywhere: the register names no belief for these atoms (ruling 1 and 2). Openers vary: a list to be drawn; a loss to be followed; a history to be traced.
Cast. Bea (L01, does the building), Alvin (L02, whose grandpa's pond it is), Boaz (L03, on a family trip). Each name after the first does a job the first could not: a different place and a different year each time; no lesson has two children. Names from Topic 26's row of grade5/NAMES_POOL.md; Miss Zamora is named in L01's text and spoken once in no script (the L01 script says "Bea writes down who eats what" to stay under 150 words).
Example sequences. None: all three atoms are routines, and nothing is sorted into classes. L02's "same way / opposite way" is a two-branch step of the routine, taught as a worked pair on one web and summarised in a two-row table; it is not a rule that judges cases (both branches are positives), so it takes no example sequence and no sequences block. S118 has nothing to read and is silent (vault tool: 0 FAIL).
Check types. Every lesson is type (b) scaffolded → bare (design-check-sequence): L01 the routine's steps asked one at a time on fresh webs (which way; where it starts; how many in; how many out), two drawn webs checked against a list (the wrong-way arrow; the missing arrow), then the bare reads of a finished drawing; L02 the scaffold on ONE fresh web (the Oregon stream: fewer trout) — which way to follow, same or opposite, so what happens, then the food side — then bare predictions in text and on a drawn lake web, then one reason item; L03 the scaffold on ONE fresh web (the Colorado meadow: the eagles gone) link by link, then bare two-link traces in text and on drawn webs, a which-changes-first item, one multi-select (the set that ends up with more) and one reason item. No claim item anywhere.
Which lessons could do without a video. None: L01's arrows draw themselves one sentence at a time; L02's chips flip from FEWER to MORE as the arrow is followed; L03's ripple runs link by link across one drawing. Every lesson is "video and article".
Words. Nothing coined (terms is empty; S46 B = 0, C = 0, D = 0). "food web" (Grade 4 Topic 35) is recalled in Grade 4's sentence ("A food web is many food chains joined together.") and recognised by MCQ in the practice set (RECALL_BY_MCQ: a two-word term is never typed). The arrow convention is Grade 3 Topic 41's lexicon sentence word for word ("In a food chain drawing, the arrow points from the food to the animal that eats it.") in L01, then Grade 4's shorter form ("from the food to the one that eats it") on every legend and rule. "predator" and "prey" (Topic 23's, being written in parallel) are recapped in one line in L02 ("The heron hunts and eats the minnow, so the heron is a predator, and the minnow is its prey.") and never re-coined; if Topic 23 does not coin them after all, that one line is the fix. A change in numbers is "more" / "fewer" (never "population", never "biggest / smallest"). "willow" is described before it is used ("small trees with thin branches that grow by water"); "sea urchin" likewise in the intro.
Questions for James
None. Every structural call here is one his answer would not change what a student learns by (the three real webs, the forward/back handle, the Yellowstone history, the no-coining decision); each is recorded above and under "Judgement calls".
Per-lesson table
| Lesson | Atom | Type | Headache opener | Rule line (protected) | Quiz | Attached key |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| L01 | LIF5-015 | Routine, worked in three steps | Bea's six sentences on the prairie; narrator asks | To build a food web, write each living thing's name once. Then draw one arrow for each sentence of who eats what, from the food to the one that eats it. | 9: 4 fluency (direction, start, counts) + 2 drawn-web checks + 1 multi + 2 bare reads | A |
| L02 | LIF5-016 | Routine, two branches | the pond's minnows sicken; narrator asks forward and back | To predict the next link, follow the arrow. Forward means to the eater, and back means to the food. Forward, the change goes the same way. Back, the change goes the opposite way. | 9: 4 scaffold on the stream + 4 bare + 1 reason | B |
| L03 | LIF5-017 | Routine, the capstone | Yellowstone's wolves hunted out; narrator asks | A change to one living thing ripples through the food web, one link at a time. At each link, follow the arrow: forward, the same way; back, the opposite way. Then move on to the next link. | 9: 3 scaffold on the meadow + 4 bare traces + 1 multi + 1 reason | A |
Design-check-sequence records
`
Skill: design-check-sequence @ cca3af6
Part: L01 (the whole lesson)
Type: (b) — a multi-step routine (write each name once; one arrow per sentence, from the food to the eater; check against the list); the student can be right at step 1 and wrong at step 2.
Plan: 9 items; 2-option direction items (q1, q2), ordered 3-option counts (q3, q4), two drawn webs checked against a list (q5 wrong-way arrow, q6 missing arrow; 3 options), one multi-select (q7: the set of arrows that belong), two bare reads (q8, q9; 3 options). Stems one or two sentences plus the ask; every web fresh (backyard, lake, desert, river, stream, marsh).
Belongs in practice/test instead: a list-to-drawing match of a whole web (the platform cannot ask the student to draw); the four-option bank forms.
Part: L02 (the whole lesson)
Type: (b) — a two-decision routine (which way is the arrow followed; so which way does the change go), each decision with a right answer.
Plan: 9 items; the scaffold on ONE fresh web (the stream, fewer trout): q1 which way (2 opt), q2 same or opposite (2 opt), q3 so what happens to the otters (2 opt), q4 the food side (2 opt); then bare 2-option predictions (q5–q8, text and the lake web); one reason item (q9, 3 options). Term recall: none (no coined term). Recall of earlier knowledge: in RECALL_BANK, before the video.
Belongs in practice/test instead: the four-option NUM4 form; multi-link traces (L03).
Part: L03 (the whole lesson)
Type: (b) — the L02 routine run two or more times in order; the student can be right at link 1 and wrong at link 2.
Plan: 9 items; the scaffold on ONE fresh web (the meadow, eagles gone): q1 link 1, q2 link 2, q3 link 3 (2 opt each, the previous link's outcome restated in the stem); bare two-link traces q4 (desert web), q5 (text), q7 (stream web); q6 which changes first (3 opt); q8 multi-select (the set that ends up with more); q9 reason (3 opt).
Belongs in practice/test instead: three-link traces, typed link counts, sets that end up fewer (the bank's hard tier).
`
The key strings
Quiz keys per lesson: L01 A B · C B A B · multi B C D · C B — L02 A B B A A B B A · A — L03 A B B A B · B · A · multi B C D · A. No position above 60 % within a lesson's same-size items (L01 2-opt 1 : 1, 3-opt A 1 B 3 C 2; L02 2-opt 4 : 4; L03 2-opt 3 : 3); no four keys in a row alternate (vault S116 clean after L02 q3–q6 and L03 q3–q4 were reordered). Attached (video order): A B A A B B. Bank MCQ letters: A 12 · B 15 · C 9 · D 8 (the NUM4 set keys only "more" or "fewer", as the science demands; the record names that). Claim verdicts: none (no claim items).
The rules applied (the brief's rulings 1–13 and the vault notes), with where each bites
| Rule | Where it bites |
|---|---|
| 1 Openers: the narrator asks over the scene | all three; no quoted claim anywhere; the openers differ in kind (a list, a loss, a history) |
| 2 No per-lesson misconception slot | no claim item in any quiz, the practice set or the bank; the register's SD-2 beliefs belong to Topics 24 and 25 |
| 3 A noun subject | "The herons have less to eat"; "the arrow runs from the grass to the grasshopper"; no bare "it" that could be misread |
| 4 The video stands alone | each script opens on its people and place, names every eats-sentence its web needs, and states the rule word for word |
| 5 What before why | L02: "fewer herons" is seen (the chip) before "less to eat" explains it; L03: each link's outcome before its direction word |
| 6 Terms: required coined, convenience never tested | nothing coined; "food web", "predator", "prey" recalled in their owners' sentences; S46 B = 0, C = 0, D = 0; no "is called" line anywhere |
| 7 Precise verbs | "eats", "follows", "points", "ripples", "hunted"; "there are fewer herons" (never "the herons get less") |
| 8 No lettered cases | every web names its animals; every item names its animals and its place |
| 9 Contrasts in one frame | the L02 rule pair "Forward, the change goes the same way. Back, the change goes the opposite way." — check_parallel PASS (two slots: the direction word, the outcome word); the first draft carried the gloss inside the pair ("Forward, to the eater, …") and FLAGGED on three slots, so the gloss became its own sentence ("Forward means to the eater, and back means to the food.") and every restatement in fb and why took the two-slot form (one form per definition) |
| 10 Forces named | no force in the topic; "gravity" never appears |
| 11 Recall bank before the video | RECALL_BANK, 6 items tagged recalls / before; none recalls the lesson immediately before |
| 12 No verdict + reason option | no claim items; reason items state the outcome in the stem and offer four single-statement reasons |
| 13 No new rules; collisions recorded | see Judgement calls |
| Grade-level words | S36 list answered below; "willow" and "sea urchin" described before named; "creek" → "river" (James's word) |
| One character carries a scene | one child per lesson; Miss Zamora only tells the class who eats what |
| A real organism survives the claim | every eats-pair checked: red-tailed hawks eat prairie dogs and meadowlarks; meadowlarks eat grasshoppers; coyotes eat prairie dogs; herons and largemouth bass eat minnows; minnows eat tadpoles; elk browse willow and grass; beavers eat willow; wolves eat elk; otters eat trout; trout eat mayflies and snails; red-tailed hawks eat jackrabbits; rattlesnakes eat desert mice; great horned owls eat robins; raccoons eat crayfish; loons eat perch; golden eagles eat marmots; weasels and owls eat voles; wolverines eat grouse and chipmunks; ibises eat water beetles; alligators eat ibises and muskrats; fishers eat porcupines; skunks eat grubs; ospreys eat whitefish; pelicans eat fish; sidewinders eat kangaroo rats; sea otters eat sea urchins |
| The intro teaches nothing | the otter story shows a change spreading but gives no arrow, no direction word and no rule; the map line names the subject |
| The summary recaps rules only | the three lessons' rule sentences word for word, no example re-told, 123 words |
Documented misconceptions used, and the beliefs deliberately not stated
None used. The LIF5 register's SD-2 list names two beliefs — "a plant's body is built from soil" (Topic 24's) and "energy circles round a food web the way matter does" (Topic 25's) — and neither belongs to these three atoms, so no claim item and no stated-then-denied belief appears anywhere in the topic (the task brief: none may be invented for the ripple). The two nearest student errors — reading the arrow backwards, and sending a change the same way in both directions — are met by the lesson's routine and drilled as plain items (the wrong-way arrow; "the same way / the opposite way"), never voiced by a child.
Checker results, every WARN answered
build_tools_check_topic.py→ 0 FAIL, 66 WARN;S46-COUNTS G5T26 B=0 C=0 D=0;S30-COUNTS typed=4 fail=0 warn=0;S37 strand=0;S38 fragments=0;S44 negative_stems=0;S29 units 0 / 0 / 0;S41 referrals=0;S35 typed_long=0.- S8 beat carries 3–4 sentences (6): the three opening beats (the scene, its web's eats-sentences and the question are one picture state) and the three rule beats (the protected rule is three sentences). Kept.
- S4 long stem (3): L01-q5 (a drawn web checked against a stated list needs the list), L02-q4 and L03-q8 (the scaffold restates the previous step; the multi-select states its four-sentence web). Kept.
- S13 stem contains key text (4): L03-q6 and q8 name every living thing of their web in the stem, and the options are those living things — the stem names all of them, so no option is the key by match or elimination (the "which of these tells you" boundary, 29 Sep 2026). Kept.
- S36 unusual words (53): perch, voles / vole, wolverine(s), loons / loon, bluegill, lynx, porcupines / porcupine, grouse, wolves, marmots / marmot, mussels / mussel, pike, grubs / grub, ibis / ibises, shrubs / shrub, skunk(s), ospreys / osprey, mink, minnow, gophers / gopher, muskrat(s), quail, meadowlarks / meadowlark, ghost (crab), salmon, pheasant, falcon(s) — US animals and fish a ten-year-old meets in a nature book, each named with its place and what it eats, the lesson's own grain (the atoms are about real food webs, and the names ARE the content); ripple / rippled (the topic's title word, James's); burrow, horizon, trail, shallows (plain scene words); spiky (describing the sea urchin before it is named); rare ("beavers became rare"); scorpions (one practice list); student ("a student building a food web" — a person doing the science, unnamed because the topic's children are headache characters). All kept. No non-US animal anywhere (the earlier draft's "creek" became "river" on James's word).
build_tools_check_terms.py→ 0 declared terms, no hits (nothing coined; no undeclared coining line).grade5/check_g5_articles.py→ 0 FAIL; articles 387 / 351 / 335 (WARN > 300: three worked steps, three links, each with its figure; the Grade 3 median is 308 and every article stands alone with a subtitle or figure every ≤ 8 idea lines — kept, the trims already made took 60–90 words off each); scripts 149 / 149 / 147; intro 120; summary 123 with the opener.check_key_tells.py→ KEY TELLS: 0 of 97 MCQs flagged (fixed sets NUM4 and WAY4 declared inKEY_TELL_EXEMPT_SETS).check_svg_ids.py→ PASS (39 figures, 0 ids written).check_lessons.py --adapter tools/check_adapter_g5.json→ 0 FAIL, 55 WARN; S118 silent (no sequences block: no example sequence in the topic); S116 clean. WARN lines: S11 "fb[key] is not empty" (the Grades 3-5 convention gives the right answer a confirming fb; the adapter reads the HS convention — standing, as on every Grade 5 topic), S8 as above, S22 "a later stem carries an earlier key" (L03 q2 and q3: the scaffold restates the previous link's outcome by design — design-check-sequence type (b), the givens carried forward), S30 article forms (the accept lists carry them).build_tools_names.py Bea Alvin Boaz Zamora→ all from Topic 26's row; Bea also used in Grade 5 Topic 2 (information only; one child within this topic).- Site built:
/tmp/g5t26_test/index.html(3 lessons, 12 practice, 51 pp100, 39 figures); routes looked at: L01 article, L02 script, L03 quiz, PP100 — the webs read at phone width, the scaffold stems and their meadow web render in order, no figure out of frame. - Blind bundle cut:
grade5/topic26_build/blind/2026-10-08/— 86 mcq, 4 text, 1 frq, 5 multi, 4 adversarial rows, 96 held. - Video batch:
handoff/G5T26/videos/batch_G5T26.json(5 videos; INTRO 120, L01 145, L02 145, L03 146, SUMMARY 114 brief words);check_brief.py→ all five ✓, no finding;grep -ci strand= 0. Not sent (every Grade 5 batch waits for James's word).
The recall bank (RECALL_BANK, 6 items)
| Recalls | From | Before | Item |
|---|---|---|---|
| LIF3-051 | G3T41 L02 | L01 | an arrow from the clover to the deer: which eats the other |
| LIF4-024 | G4T35 L06 | L01 | the lake web: which living things eat the crayfish (arrows out) |
| LIF4-024 | G4T35 L06 | L01 | the backyard web: what the fox eats (arrows in) |
| LIF3-052 | G3T41 L03 | L02 | the garden chain, every snail taken out: the robins go hungry |
| LIF3-052 | G3T41 L03 | L02 | the garden chain, every robin leaves: more snails |
| LIF4-025 | G4T35 L04 | L03 | mushrooms and mold on a log break it into bits for the soil (the practice set's decomposer ripple leans on it) |
None recalls the lesson immediately before. Delivery is James's later call.
Bank freshness, re-performed
Scene nouns listed from every lesson, quiz, attached, summary, practice and recall-bank item (prairie, Kansas, grasshopper, prairie dog, meadowlark, coyote, hawk, burrow; Minnesota, pond weed, tadpole, minnow, heron, bass, grandpa; Yellowstone, Wyoming, elk, willow, beaver, wolf / wolves; Oregon, trout, mayfly, snail, otter; Arizona, jackrabbit, desert mouse, rattlesnake; Ohio, caterpillar, robin, fox, owl; Michigan, water insect, crayfish, perch, loon, raccoon; Colorado, vole, marmot, weasel, eagle; lynx, hare, shrub; deer, leaves; frog, cricket; mice, acorn; bobcat, rabbit, clover; egret; roadrunner, scorpion, lizard; bullfrog, dragonfly; gopher snake, gopher, plant root; decomposer, oak, squirrel; lettuce, snail, robin; sea otter, sea urchin, seaweed) and grepped whole-word against the bank: 0 hits (the first draft had 26 colliding nouns; the whole bank was re-scened onto an Idaho mountain forest, a Florida marsh and twenty named pairs). "badger", "alligator" and "turtle" appear in the bank only after the two practice items that used them were moved to the bullfrog and the gopher snake.
Blind-text grep
Every item drawing's blind text (web_blind: the cards and the arrows as "from X to Y" data, plus the legend) grepped for fewer / more / wrong / missing / gone / same way / opposite: 26 drawings, 0 hits. The legend's "the one that eats it" is the convention, not a key, and appears on every web.
Figures (author self-check on the renders; the non-author review-figures pass is owed)
Renders opened: web_prairie_hawk, web_pond_eaters, web_pond_food, web_pond_up, web_ys_step3, web_ys_back, pp_web_idaho_wrong, eats_table, direction_table, and the built L01 article, L02 script, L03 quiz and PP100 pages at 420 px. Two faults found and fixed on the render: (1) the MORE / FEWER chip sat on the arrow leaving a card's top (the minnow, the willow) — web_marked now tries above, left, right, below and takes the first position that clears every arrow, card and chip by geometry; (2) the Idaho lynx card nearly touched the grouse card — a card_gap_guard (12 units of clear paper between any two cards) now runs on every web, and the record prints its report: every web clean (PRAIRIE, POND, YELLOWSTONE, STREAM, STREAM_WRONG, DESERT, BACKYARD, LAKE, MEADOW, IDAHO, IDAHO_WRONG, MARSH: no crossing, no arrow through a card, no two cards within 12 units). The web is Grade 4 Topic 35's drawer imported; the marked web is its registered variant (one depiction per thing); item webs show the BEFORE state only. Photo and cartoon placeholders carry briefs in IMAGE_BRIEFS; the picture pass runs after the text is reviewed (no question for James is open, so it need not wait).
Names run
python3 build_tools_names.py Bea Alvin Boaz Zamora → Bea: INFO already used in topic02 (may recur across topics; one child within this topic); Alvin free; Boaz free; Zamora free. No child's name appears in any item ("Dev" was in one bank item in the first draft and is Topic 27's child; replaced by "a student").
Sentence-atomise self-check (collapsed to the rows that changed)
| Paragraph | Check | Fix applied |
|---|---|---|
| L01 a32 (the two chains) | #14 longest sentence ≤ 20 words | split into three lines: one chain; the other chain; what the two share |
| L02 a24 (more minnows) | #2 one idea per sentence | "The herons and the bass have more to eat, so there are more herons and more bass." |
| L03 headache 2 / a1 (the willows) | #7 plain word before the term; #14 | "Willow trees line the bank: small trees with thin branches that grow by water." as its own line |
| L03 closing return | #4 named actor | "So the willows Boaz sees by the river are the far end of a ripple that started with the wolves." |
| L01-q7 why | #14 verbless colon fragment | "The three sentences become three arrows: …" |
| intro beats 1–4 | #12 cut what does no work | 126 → 120 words; "So how" → "How" |
| summary bullets | S38 verb before a colon | "Forward, to the eater, the change goes the same way" (no colon) |
| scripts L01 / L03 | S25 ≤ 150 spoken words | the ranger's line and "One change rippled three links" cut; 166 / 172 → 149 / 150 |
Every other idea line, caption, fb and why passed rows 1–14 on the first read (one idea, named noun subject, cause before effect, the link stated: "fewer minnows eat tadpoles, so there are more tadpoles").
Judgement calls and rule collisions
- Three scenes, not one running scene. The brief's model topic runs one class through one scene; here each atom needs a bigger web than the last (six cards to build; one change followed both ways; three links traced), and the task named three real US webs. Decided: one place per lesson, one child per lesson, one teacher named in text.
- Yellowstone as the capstone's scene. A real, documented cascade that a child can picture (wolves, elk, willows, beavers), told as a prediction first and history second. The article says "beavers became rare" and "more beavers", never a count; the simplification (grass and willow stand for all the elk's food) is not named, because naming it would add a line the register does not ask for. Recorded, not asked.
- The forward / back handle. LIF5-016's behaviour ("its food, or the thing that eats it, changes") is taught as one routine step — follow the arrow forward: the same way; back: the opposite way — because that handle is what L03's chaining needs. Both branches are positives, so no example sequence and no
sequencesblock (write-lesson Step 1: a rule that judges cases needs one; a two-branch routine does not). - No coining; predator and prey recapped, not coined. The task says Topic 23 coins them; this topic says the pair once in L02 as a recap line (no "is called"). If Topic 23's agent does not coin them, L02's one line becomes the fix.
- The NUM4 fixed set keys only "more" or "fewer". A change always moves a neighbour one way or the other, so "the same" and "none at all" are never keys; they stay as the two real misreadings (the change does not reach; the change wipes the neighbour out). The set is declared in
KEY_TELL_EXEMPT_SETS; the record names the fixed-key pattern so the reviewer does not read it as a tell. - Typed items are counts, not words. Nothing is coined, so the hard tier types counts the student produces (links away; arrows into a card) rather than terms; direction words ("more" / "fewer") are never typed because they are two things in view (the 29 Sep ruling).
- S23 and stem shape. Every easy and medium bank stem was merged to two sentences ("One year there are far more fish: what happens to the number of pelicans?"); hard stems keep three where the chain needs them.
- The practice set carries one decomposer ripple (the register's own LIF5-017 example) in text, leaning on LIF4-025, which the recall bank restates before L03; decomposers are not drawn inside any web (Grade 4's convention: the mushroom beside the web, no arrow).
- The bank was re-scened wholesale after the freshness grep. The first draft reused quiz-web and attached-question animals under new places (hawk, bass, trout, otter, snail, raccoon, lynx, owl and mice, deer, clover, bobcat); every one was replaced.
Owed
- The non-author reads: review-questions over every quiz, practice, recall and bank item; review-figures over the 39 renders (the author's self-check above is not the gate); review-accuracy on the eats-pairs and the Yellowstone history.
- The blind read of
blind/2026-10-08/by two cold readers, then adjudication; zero unverified keys ship. - The picture pass (3 photos, 4 cartoons) through David's pack after the reads.
- The video batch waits for James's word; nothing has been sent.