Skill: course-build → write-mcqs → write-explanation, design-check-sequence @ a5ff054
Topic 12 — Sound — the PP100's five question types, with their exemplars
What this page is. James approves a bank's question TYPES before the bank is generated (vault: A bank is reviewed as its question types first, one exemplar each, 28 Sep 2026). This sheet writes the exemplars in full, exactly as they sit in content/G3T12.py (PP100, flagged TYPE_SHEET_ONLY). Five types, six items (type 3 carries its "closer" form as a second exemplar). No other bank item exists yet. Once the types stand, about fifty items are generated from them, varying scene and nouns, easy-heavy; the typed type carries at most eight.
Hard items are typed, not MCQs (James, 28 Sep 2026, night). "PP100s can have text entry or numeric entry… prioritize text entry as a sort of harder question type… prioritize easy questions." So type 5, the sheet's one hard type, is a text-entry item with an accept list in the lesson's own words; types 1–4 are four-option MCQs and are the bulk of the sheet. The topic has no numerical atom, so there is no numeric-entry type.
How to read a type line. Each says what the stem asks, what the four options are (the kind of thing), and gives its exemplar scene. Every MCQ has four options and a why (no per-option feedback in the bank; the engine prints Correct / Not quite). Tags follow depth of reasoning: easy = the fact applied once to a fresh case; medium = pick the reason, or read the distance off a drawing and apply the rule; hard = two ideas chained, typed. No option bundles a verdict with a reason; every stem is a positive question; no item figure carries a motion mark, a sound arc or an amount word; no bank item shows a reference list or the chain card.
The five types
| Type | Items | Atom | Tag | Form | The stem asks… | The four options are… | Exemplar scene |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | PP-1 | ENE3-030 | easy | MCQ | which of four described things is vibrating | four everyday things, one of them sounding ("a bell ringing in a tower"), three still and quiet | a ringing bell among a quiet bell, a book and a cup |
| 2 | PP-4 | ENE3-031 | medium | MCQ | why a named child can hear a sound from far away | four single-statement reasons; the key names the vibration traveling through the air to the ear; the distractors are touch, light and the ground. For the bank: the instrument varies and is never the bell (a bell heard across a playground is an L02 quiz scene) | Hamza and a bell across a field |
| 3 | PP-2, PP-3 | ENE3-032 (the second form pairs with 031: the vibration still travels through the air) | easy | MCQ | a sound makes a light thing near it shake; the thing is moved a FEW STEPS farther (first form) or closer (second form): what happens to the shaking — the move is always bounded ("a few steps"), so "stops at once" is never defensible | four happenings: shakes more / shakes less / just the same / stops at once | a plant's leaves and a speaker · a ribbon and a drum |
| 4 | PP-5 | ENE3-032 + ENE3-031 | medium | MCQ, drawn | given a drawn row of jars at J, K and L from a drum, which jar's beads jump the least | the three jars and "all three the same"; the figure shows the jars at rest, no arcs, no motion marks | q_jars_jkl |
| 5 | PP-6 | ENE3-030 + ENE3-031 | hard | text entry | a gong is grabbed and kept still while someone across the hall was hearing it ring: WHAT DOES HE HEAR NOW — a bounded ask with a small honest answer set | typed; a generated accept set: {nothing, nothing at all, no sound, no ringing, no noise, silence, quiet, not a sound, no more ringing} with and without a leading "he hears", plus "it is quiet (now)" | Naomi's gong, Oren across the hall |
Coverage (every atom alone, and the pairs)
| Atom | Types testing it alone | Pair types |
|---|---|---|
| ENE3-030 sound comes from vibration | 1 | 5 (with 031) |
| ENE3-031 sound travels through the air to your ear | 2 | 4 (with 032), 5 (with 030) |
| ENE3-032 things farther from a sound shake less | 3 (both forms) | 4 (with 031) |
Order in the file: easy → medium → hard (PP-1 … PP-6). MCQ keys: A B B C C (no letter over 35 %); PP-6 typed.
The exemplars, in full
Type 1 — PP-1 · ENE3-030 · easy
Stem: Which of these is vibrating?
- a) a bell ringing in a tower ← key
- b) a bell hanging quiet in a tower
- c) a book lying on a shelf
- d) a cup sitting on a table
Why: The quiet bell, the book and the cup are still. None of them makes a sound. / The ringing bell makes a sound. / Every sound is made by something vibrating. / So the ringing bell is vibrating.
Type 3 — PP-2 · ENE3-032 · easy
Stem: A loud speaker makes the leaves of a plant near it shake. What happens to the leaves when Joon moves the plant a few steps farther from the speaker?
- a) They shake more.
- b) They shake less. ← key
- c) They shake just the same.
- d) They stop shaking at once.
Why: The plant is a few steps farther from the speaker now. / The farther a thing is from the sound, the less it shakes. / The leaves still shake a little, just less.
Type 3, second form — PP-3 · ENE3-032 (+ 031) · easy
Stem: A loud drum makes a ribbon hanging near it shake. What happens to the ribbon when Idil hangs it closer to the drum?
- a) It shakes less.
- b) It shakes more. ← key
- c) It shakes just the same.
- d) It stops shaking.
Why: The ribbon is closer to the drum now. / The farther a thing is from the sound, the less it shakes. / So the closer it is, the more it shakes. / The ribbon shakes more.
Type 2 — PP-4 · ENE3-031 · medium
Stem: Hamza hears a bell ring from across the field. Why can he hear it?
- a) The bell touches his ear.
- b) The light from the bell reaches his eyes.
- c) The bell's vibration travels through the air to his ear. ← key
- d) The bell sends the sound along the ground to his feet.
Why: The bell vibrates. / The vibration travels through the air across the field. / It reaches Hamza's ear, so he hears the bell. / The bell never touches him, and light and the ground carry nothing to his ear.
Medium because: the student picks the reason (DOK 2) on a fresh scene; the distractors are the three things a child reaches for instead of the air (touch, light, the ground).
Type 4 — PP-5 · ENE3-032 + ENE3-031 · medium · drawn (q_jars_jkl: a drum at the left; three jars of beads at J, K, L along a table, J nearest; the beads at rest; no arcs, no marks)
Stem: Three jars of beads sit at J, K and L, and the drum is hit once. Which jar's beads jump the least?
- a) jar J
- b) jar K
- c) jar L ← key
- d) all three the same
Why: The drum's vibration travels through the air to every jar. / Jar L is farthest from the drum. / The farther a thing is from the sound, the less it shakes. / So jar L's beads jump the least.
Medium because: the distance is read off the drawing and the rule applied to three cases at once; "all three the same" is the misconception that the sound reaches every jar alike.
Type 5 — PP-6 · ENE3-030 + ENE3-031 · hard · TEXT ENTRY
Stem: Naomi bangs a gong, and across the hall Oren hears it ring. Then Naomi grabs the gong with both hands and keeps holding it still. What does Oren hear now? Type one or two words.
Accept (generated, 20 forms): nothing · nothing at all · no sound · no ringing · no noise · silence · quiet · not a sound · no more ringing, each with and without a leading "he hears", plus "he hears nothing now", "it is quiet", "it is quiet now" (the grader ignores case, a final period and spacing). "It gets quieter" and "it fades" are refused on purpose: the gong is held still, so it is not vibrating and makes no sound — the lesson's own line is "The shaking stops. The sound stops too." The non-author review (28 Sep night) asked for this bounded ask so the honest set is small; the earlier open ask ("what happens to the ringing?") had an unbounded set and refused a child's likeliest forms ("it stopped", "he cant hear it").
Why: Naomi's hands hold the gong still, so the gong stops vibrating. / Every sound is made by something vibrating. / The gong makes no sound now, so no vibration travels through the air to Oren. / Oren hears nothing.
Hard because: two ideas are chained — no vibration, no sound (L01), and what Oren hears across the hall is the gong's vibration that traveled through the air (L02) — and the student produces the answer rather than picking it. The three-sentence stem also puts it in the hard block by James's rule. The bank's typed items (at most eight) copy this bounded form: "What does X hear now?" after the sounding thing is held still.
Reading notes for the review
- The verdict-and-reason option form is not used anywhere; the claim items live in the lesson quizzes and practice as bare yes / no.
- Type 4 is the one drawn type: the item figure shows the jars at rest with no motion marks, arcs or amount words (the register: vibration is shown as motion lines and never as a verdict word on an item figure). Letters J, K, L sit outside the option-label alphabet.
- Scenes here are fresh against the lessons (ruler, drum with rice, rubber band on a box, throat; drum on a field, bell tower, dog behind a boy; drum and tray of rice at three distances), against the lesson quizzes (bell in a hall, guitar string, bee, cymbal, Rohan's hum, rubber band on a desk, Lola's triangle, Jaya's glass, Naomi's drum claim; harp, bell across a playground, Emeka's school bell, Selin with her back to a drummer, Rohan's whistle, Oren's dog across the street, Lola's car horn, Paulo in the dark; speaker and salt, Bilal's claim, bell and paper strip, Selin's bowl, Rohan's sand and radio, bowls J and K, the brass band and the window, the gong and sugar, Lola's beads) and against the practice set (xylophone bar, Emeka's guitar string, Jaya's rooster, Paulo's thunder, a feather and a speaker, sand at 1 and 5 steps from a cymbal, Selin's drum-and-rice claim, the drummer and the jar of beads). The gong appears in an L03 fluency item (what the sound carries) and in PP-6 as a different move (a chain judged); the bell appears in four different moves across the topic (which is vibrating; what it traveled through; why he hears it; why the paper strip shakes).
- Design-move inventory (one line per bank item): PP-1 student picks the one sounding thing from four as the vibrating one · PP-2 student predicts the shaking after a move farther · PP-3 student predicts the shaking after a move closer · PP-4 student picks the reason a distant sound is heard · PP-5 student reads three distances off a drawing and picks the least shaking · PP-6 student chains "held still → no vibration → no sound → nothing reaches Oren" and types the outcome. Against the quizzes and practice: PP-2/PP-3 share the predict move with L03-05/06 and PR-05 (scene kind differs: plant leaves / ribbon against a bowl of water, sand, a feather) and are marked draw-one-per-test with them; PP-5 shares the drawn-comparison move with L03-07 (two bowls, which ripples less — a different count and object; draw-one-per-test); PP-6's chain appears nowhere in the quizzes.
- Not planned: any multi-select; none of these answers is a set. No numeric entry: the topic has no number to type.
- Names used in this topic, one child per name where a name recurs (review #25): Rohan, Lola, Jaya, Naomi (L01); Paulo, Emeka, Selin, Rohan, Oren, Ada (L02); Bilal, Reza, Gus, Lola (L03); Emeka, Jaya, Paulo, Tova (practice); Joon, Idil, Hamza, Naomi, Oren (bank); Bilal and Selin in the intro; Quinn in the summary. Checked against Topics 1–8 and 11's content files: none collides.