Backlog: small calls on the scripts and videos
None of these blocks anything. The course runs on the default shown on each card until you rule; one tap per card, saved and sent.
What is here: eleven calls left open by the two non-author script reads and the Topic 1 batch build. Question-bank items you parked on 12 Oct are listed at the foot without buttons.
Does the summary video end on a bullet screen?
The course says: Every summary is now ONE video under two minutes (your 14 Oct ruling); each closes on two to four bullets, one per rule line it just said.
Why it is a question:
- Your 12 Oct rule: bullets only when a video ends on a mini-summary; a summary is a mini-summary by nature.
- Your 14 Oct ruling for lessons prints the rule sentence as one line; a summary has several rule lines, so bullets, not one line.
- Topic 1's summary is re-rendered as one video with this close.
Cost of changing it: None: a cue line in each summary script.
My recommendation: Keep the bullets on the summary's close.
Do the videos show litmus paper in real red and blue?
The course says: Topic 14 L01 and L02 cues carry the article's monochrome legend (hatched = blue litmus paper, dark gray = red) into a colour video.
Why it is a question:
- The articles' figures are monochrome by rule, so hatch and gray stand for the colours there.
- A video can show the colour change itself: “the dipped end turns red”.
- Two conventions for one thing is the risk; the article would still be hatched.
Cost of changing it: Two cue lines in Topic 14; the figures stay as they are.
My recommendation: Real colour in the videos, hatch stays in print.
Topic 9: keep the swapped video marks on L04 and L05?
The course says: L04 Metals, nonmetals and metalloids is now “definitely a video”; L05 The staircase: where each kind sits is now “could do without”.
Why it is a question:
- The reader's argument: L04 shows three materials being bent, struck and tested, which is motion; L05 is a still table the article shows as well.
- Before the swap it was the other way round.
- Both lessons still get a script either way; the mark only decides whether a video is generated.
Cost of changing it: None now; it decides one video in the Topic 9 batch.
My recommendation: Keep the swap.
Does the ‘hotter thing heats the colder thing’ rule reach the pictures?
The course says: Every narration line names the hotter thing as the actor (“The warm air heats the cold ice”). Topic 2's screens still show HEAT IN / HEAT OUT arrow chips, and Topic 3 L05 shows arrows climbing a steel handle.
Why it is a question:
- The 7 Oct grades 3–5 rule bans heat as a travelling object in the words; it says nothing about drawings.
- An arrow labelled HEAT IN is the picture of the thing the words avoid.
- Replacing the chips means a label on the hotter thing instead (“warm air”, “hot stove”) with the arrow kept.
Cost of changing it: About six cue lines in Topics 2 and 3.
My recommendation: Yes: label the hotter thing, keep the arrow, drop the HEAT chips.
Which grade do the videos declare to the generator: 7 for the whole band?
The course says: Every Topic 1 brief says grade “7”, the middle of grades 6–8.
Why it is a question:
- The generator pitches vocabulary and pace from the grade field.
- The course is one self-paced band; no topic belongs to one grade year.
- The alternative is 6 for early topics and 8 for the last ones.
Cost of changing it: One constant in the batch tool.
My recommendation: Grade 7 throughout.
Topic 1 L03: does perfume cross a still room in twenty seconds, or soften it?
The course says: The script says perfume opened at the front of a still classroom reaches the back in about twenty seconds, by particle motion alone.
Why it is a question:
- In a real room air currents do most of that carrying; pure particle spreading is slower.
- The same video's overnight food-colouring case is the honest one.
- Softening to “a minute or two” or “before long” keeps the point and loses the number.
Cost of changing it: One sentence; the video is already rendering, so it would be a re-render of L03.
My recommendation: Soften to “before long” at the next Topic 1 fix round, not now.
Topic 7: keep the numbered, unlabelled particle drawings (drawing 1 to drawing 5)?
The course says: L03, L04 and L06 show numbered particle drawings; the grades 3–5 rule bans lettered cases.
Why it is a question:
- The numbered drawing is the atom's exam shape: STAAR and SSA items say “Diagram 1”.
- Both readers agreed to keep them for that reason.
- Named drawings (“the copper drawing”) would hide the exam form the student will meet.
Cost of changing it: None if kept; nine cue lines if named.
My recommendation: Keep them: it is the exam format.
Topic 1 lessons 6 and 8: extend the final hold from about 1.4 seconds to 2 or 3?
The course says: In both videos the last bullet appears with the final rule sentence and “Okay, now your turn” follows straight on, so the completed closing screen is up for about a second and a half before the file ends. The other ten Topic 1 videos hold 3.5 to 5.5 seconds.
Why it is a question:
- The page’s player stops on the final frame, so the closing screen stays visible while the student reads the question.
- A longer hold is a visual-only edit by video id; the audio is untouched.
- Both videos are delivered and live; the edit would replace them in place.
Cost of changing it: Two edits, about half an hour each on the server; nothing else changes.
My recommendation: Leave as delivered; the page holds the frame.
Drop the speed arrows from the gas drawings topic-wide, as in Lesson 4?
The course says: The register draws a gas particle with a straight arrow whose length shows its speed. You said the arrows were not useful in Topic 1 Lesson 4; its colour edit drops them and shows the jiggle speed instead. Lessons 8, 9 and 10 and the summary still use them.
Why it is a question:
- One depiction per thing: if Lesson 4 shows speed by motion, the gas boxes elsewhere should probably match.
- Arrows do carry one thing motion cannot: direction at a glance in a still frame or a page figure.
- Dropping them is one more visual edit on four Topic 1 videos and a register change for later topics.
Cost of changing it: Four visual edits by id; one register line.
My recommendation: Drop them topic-wide once Lesson 4's edit shows the motion reads clearly.
The 39 former mixed-practice items that cannot join a bank as they are: recast, or drop them?
The course says: Folding the mixed practice into the PP100 banks (your ruling with David, 15 Oct) left 39 items that cannot join a bank as they are: 26 yes/no or two-way sort items, 5 three-way partitions, and 8 whose written fourth option both blind readers rejected because the stem names its three classes. They sit untouched in PRACTICE_RETIRED.
Why it is a question:
- A PP100 bank item is a four-option MCQ or a typed item; a two-option claim has no fourth distractor that is a real student error.
- Most are recall checks the lesson quizzes already cover; a few are good binary sorts that could become typed items (name the kind).
- Recasting is new authoring and a cold read; dropping costs nothing the banks lack (every bank now holds 56–62 items).
Cost of changing it: Recast: an afternoon of write-mcqs plus two readers. Drop: nothing.
My recommendation: Drop them; the banks are full and the quizzes cover the recall.
Topic 6: may a lesson end “So, the substance that dissolves is called the solute”?
The course says: L02 and L04 close by naming the term just explained; your 8 Oct boundary allows a definition close.
Why it is a question:
- The grades 3–5 rule bans “so here is the rule” endings.
- A coining lesson has nothing else to end on: the thing was shown, now it gets its name.
- Both readers left it, citing your boundary; recorded so nobody ‘fixes’ it twice.
Cost of changing it: None if allowed.
My recommendation: Allowed: a coining lesson may close on its term.
Parked at your request
Listed so they are not lost; no ruling asked.
- PP100 banks: your second review of the typed items (you asked to be reminded). Parked while the mastery assessment changes.
- Topic 9's staircase-name typed item sits behind a draw constraint; Topic 12's sealed-jar mass is printed in a stem; Topic 2 has two options that each describe two happenings. Question-bank items, parked.
- Topics 2 and 3 still list Topic 1's lexicon sentences, so a checker warns their summaries no longer say them; a register field, not a student-facing fault.
- Four licensed-photo slots (placeholders on the pages) wait for a photo source.
- Topic 4 L05: whether the gold ring should be half a cubic centimetre rather than one (a table value; the article is not under review).