MS Life Science — the one page for James (15 October 2026, late evening)
Where the build stands (15 October, late evening). All thirteen topics are now authored and closed on keys. The five topics you gave the go for this morning (4, 6, 8, 10 and 13) each went through two blind readers, an examiner, an adjudicator and a second blind read today, and every key stood. Their scripts are on the scripts page for your notes. Question banks are written for five topics (5, 7, 9, 11 and 12) and are being read blind now; the other eight follow. On your ruling this evening, each topic's mixed practice set folds into its bank, so a student meets one end-of-topic test drawn from one bank. Your five sample videos are still in the pipeline's edit queue, which is running slowly; they post first when it clears. Below, after card 9, are eleven new decisions from the five topics closed today. Everything else those topics raised was decided under the student test and is listed under "Applied without asking".
Where the build stands (15 October, morning). All 69 videos for Topics 5, 7, 9, 11 and 12 are rendered; two passed first time and the rest wait on one audio edit each (the pipeline's edit queue stalled overnight and is running again; your five sample videos post first). You signed off the cytoplasm video, the Topic 7 intro and the biotic/abiotic lesson this morning; the two fixes you asked for (no drop drawn round the cell; two bullets, living first) are re-rendering. You gave the go for five more topics: Topics 4, 6, 8, 10 and 13 — the rest of the course — which are authored next, one topic at a time as agent slots free, then rendered. PP100 banks for Topics 5, 7, 9 and 11 are being written now. Below is the one new decision your first-time-render question raised.
Where the build stands (13 October, midday). Your Topic 2 review found two root causes, and both run through all three topics, so all three are being fixed at once. First, the closing line. Every lesson ended "So
Your five taps this morning are applied: the Topic 1 batch goes the moment the render server is back (every MS Chemistry video failed yesterday; a control render decides); two atoms stay on one lesson; the three assumed atoms get recall items before lesson 1; recall items live in the recall bank; the PP100 is a bank of six items per atom drawn from, so Topic 1's bank grows from 31 to 78 and Topics 2 and 3 get theirs. A plain tap now sends itself; only Other and Change this need Send.
On the elephant (lesson 10): "hundreds of thousands" is the accurate figure. A 6,000 kg African elephant against a 20 g house mouse is about 300,000 times heavier, so "millions" would overstate it. Left as written unless you want a different pair.
Your 13 October rulings on Topic 3 are being applied now (the intro cut, your lesson 2 script word for word, "the arrow means", two select-all items before the typed equation, the tomato item as a positive prediction with no chart); it then goes to the video pipeline as you asked. PP100s are one per topic, not clusters: banks of six items per atom, harder items first, are being written for Topics 1 to 3 now; the clusters page is closed. Two later-course samples are being authored for your read: Topic 11 (dominant, recessive and the Punnett square — a short, procedural topic) and Topic 7 (ecosystems and food webs — a long, systems topic). Topic 1 is at the video pipeline: eleven videos feeding since 13:14, first landings expected mid-afternoon.
New today (14 October, afternoon): the twenty Topic 1 and Topic 3 videos are re-rendered in COLOUR and play from the local page on this Mac (nine passed as rendered, eleven awaiting one audio edit each, replaced in place as they land). Topics 5 (the kingdoms) and 12 (natural selection) are closed on keys and on the scripts page; Topic 9 (traits and reproduction) is there too, its adjudication in hand. Every lesson quiz across the course is now at most five questions, as you ruled this afternoon. Video batches for Topics 7, 11 and 12 are being built in colour; Topic 2's eleven are rendering. Topic 2's videos are at the pipeline on your sign-off. Both earlier samples (Topics 7 and 11) are on the scripts page and closed on keys (two cold readers each, an examiner, an adjudicator, a second read; one key changed in Topic 7 — a millipede eating dead leaves was a consumer by the lesson's own test, so it became a fungus). All three PP100 banks are closed on keys at six items per atom: Topic 1 78 items, Topic 2 66, Topic 3 48, each with two cold reads, an examiner, an adjudicator and a second read, and a draw-one list so a shorter test never pairs two items that hand each other an answer. Topic 1's bank · Topic 2's · Topic 3's. Topic 7 — Ecosystems and food webs: thirteen lessons in one meadow, introduced once and pointed at after that; water, air and a suitable place; the meadow coined an ecosystem; producer, consumer and decomposer sorted on one dead deer with your Topic 3 sorting shape; the chain drawn arrow by arrow with the wrong arrow called wrong; the web read both ways; the intro's rabbit disease answered with bars. Every lesson 169 to 178 words. Its cold reads start now. Topic 11 below is the Punnett-square sample.
Two Topic 7 calls for you (the rest of its blueprint decisions are listed under "Applied without asking"):
5. Biotic factor, abiotic factor and population are named by the Texas standard but have no atom. Add them?
The course says: Lesson 5 coins biotic and abiotic factor; lesson 13 coins population; the register has no row for any of the three.
Why it is a question: - TEKS 6.12A names all three, so a test can ask for them. - Autotroph and heterotroph were added the same way on 12 October. - Without a row they cannot be tagged in the PP100 bank.
Cost of changing it: three register rows, logged and validated.
My recommendation: add the three atoms.
A: Add the three atoms / B: Coin them, no atoms
6. Water, air and a suitable place: three short lessons, or one?
The course says: Lessons 1 to 3 teach the three needs as three videos of about 170 words each, one atom per lesson.
Why it is a question: - Each is one idea on one case: the dry July, the trout, the shade. - Your 13 October ruling lets one lesson carry two atoms, and the three together would still fit 180 words only by cutting the cases. - The grade 3 to 5 courses taught the needs; here they are retrieved, then sharpened into "suits it".
Cost of changing it: two scripts cut and one rewritten; the quizzes merged.
My recommendation: keep three short lessons.
A: Keep three short lessons / B: Fold into one lesson
7. Two videos in three come back with a reworded coining. Keep editing each one, or print the exact lines on screen?
The course says: Every line marked "spoken word for word" is checked; a paraphrase is an audio edit by id. Fourteen edits have run today and every one restored every line, at 20 to 40 minutes each.
Why it is a question: - Tonight's trial settled one thing: putting each exact sentence alone in its own short step changes nothing. Your Topic 3 lesson 2 script came back with one of ten lines intact in both shapes. - What the renderer does keep, every time, is the ending and whatever is printed on screen. Topic 1's closes held in all ten lessons, and each had its rule sentence printed on the closing screen as it was spoken. - MS Chemistry's Topic 1 fits the same pattern: the two lessons whose closing screen printed the rule sentence as one line held it; the five with bullet closes had it reworded. - Across all 20 of our first renders, 85 protected lines: lines printed on the closing screen held 73 percent of the time, unprinted lines 29 percent. Short lines survive on their own ("The arrow means react to make."); long compound sentences and the "Something that … is called …" coining form are the ones that go. - So two levers, neither a guarantee: write each exact line short, and print it on the closing screen. Printing runs against your 9 October ruling that a close is one short line OR bullets, with bullets for a multi-point close.
Cost of changing it: the screen style for coinings and rule lines; nothing in the scripts.
My recommendation: keep the audio edit as the standing route (22 of 22 edits across both courses restored every line today), and in the next topic's videos make every closing screen the one printed rule sentence, with bullets only where the rule genuinely has several parts, to see how many edits that removes.
A: Keep editing; next topic closes print the rule line / B: Keep editing every reworded line, no change
8. Topics 1 and 3's twenty videos are finished. Put them on the review site?
The course says: All eleven Topic 1 videos and all nine Topic 3 videos are delivered to the course's video folder, every protected line word for word, 54 to 95 seconds each.
Why it is a question: - Video never goes into the review site's own deploy (a 25 MB ceiling), so playing them there means an upload to the course's Cloudflare storage. - Nothing is uploaded without your say-so. - Until then they play from the course folder on this machine only.
Cost of changing it: one upload of twenty files, about 90 MB; the topic pages then link to them.
My recommendation: upload them, so you can watch Topics 1 and 3 as a student would, on their topic pages.
A: Upload the videos to the review site / B: Keep them on this machine for now
For Peps and Matt: what the renderer does to a script — two examples, line by line (your lesson 9 and your own Topic 3 lesson 2), with the numbers beneath.
What to read next: the Topic 11 sample — Dominant, recessive and the Punnett square, on the scripts page, below Topic 3. Seven lessons on Mendel's pea plants on one growing drawing; every check moves to a fresh animal or plant; Punnett squares drawn, never narrated; every Punnett question closed (a count, a chance typed as "3 in 4", or a lettered box). Two cold readers and an examiner are on its questions now. Topic 3's fixes are in and its nine videos are at the pipeline. The Topic 7 sample (ecosystems and food webs) is being authored.
Three Topic 11 calls for you (the other blueprint decisions were taken at their recommendations and are listed under "Applied without asking"):
2. Pea plants carry two copies of each gene — stated as a given, and a new atom?
The course says: "Every pea plant carries two copies of the gene for flower color, one from each parent." (lesson 1, told as a fact)
Why it is a question: - Dominant and recessive mean nothing without the two-copies fact, and no atom in Topics 9 to 11 states it. - Topic 10's gene atoms say a feature travels as a gene and a gene comes in versions, but not that each body cell holds two. - A new fact atom before LIF-131 would give the sentence a home and a test.
Cost of changing it: one register row, logged and validated; no lesson changes.
My recommendation: state it as a given in lesson 1 now, and add the atom to the register.
A: State it and add the atom / B: State it, no new atom
3. One Punnett lesson, or two?
The course says: Lesson 7 teaches the Punnett square once: a worked cross in the video, then a scaffolded cross and two bare crosses in its questions.
Why it is a question: - One lesson keeps the topic at seven and the square in one place. - Two lessons would split "fill the square" from "read the chances off it", each with its own video. - The high-school course gives a whole lesson to "3 in 4 is a chance, not a promise"; here it is one spoken line.
Cost of changing it: one more script and quiz.
My recommendation: one lesson, with the chance-not-a-promise line spoken once.
A: One Punnett lesson / B: Two Punnett lessons
4. How is a chance written?
The course says: Lesson 7 says "3 in 4"; the chip shows "3 in 4 (75%)" once; every form is accepted when typed: "3 in 4", "3/4", "75%", "three quarters".
Why it is a question: - "3 in 4" reads as a count of offspring, which is how the square is built. - A fraction or percentage is what the state tests print. - Accepting every form costs nothing; the spoken form is the choice.
Cost of changing it: a handful of spoken lines and chips.
My recommendation: "3 in 4" spoken, the percentage once on the chip, every form accepted.
A: "3 in 4" spoken / B: Fraction spoken
What to read after that: Topic 3 (again, if you want to see the fixes), with the two root-cause fixes, on the scripts page. Topic 2 carries your 13 October notes and is closed on keys again; no re-read needed. Topic 1's batch is ready but not yet posted: its eleven briefs are in the Video Brief Guide's ten-field form, the one the renderer is proven on, with the recap closes and every lesson under 180 words, and the checker passes them. My message handing it to the video pipeline session was blocked by this session's permission layer, so it needs you: either allow the send in the chat, or paste the hand-off message yourself (it is written out in the batch's READY file). Three recall items now sit before Topic 1's first lesson for the assumed grade 3 to 5 ideas.
| Lessons | Essential questions | Attached questions | Mixed quiz | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Topic 1 | 10 | 76 | 10 | 16 |
| Topic 2 | 10 | 51 | 10 | 14 |
| Topic 3 | 8 | 46 | 8 | 11 |
Decisions
9. Should a lesson video protect only two lines — the coining and the rule — so more videos pass first time?
The course says: Every teaching sentence in a lesson is marked PROTECTED (spoken word for word): the coining, the rule, and every case sentence of the example sequence — four to ten lines a video. Two of 69 new-topic videos passed first time; the rest need one audio edit each, which has restored every line so far.
What the other chats found (HS Physics, AP Biology, MS Chemistry, Grades 3–5, and the pipeline's own count across every course): - The count of protected lines decides it. One or two protected lines a video: 40 to 70 per cent pass first time (HS Physics 9 of 13 on its latest batch). Four or more: almost never. Summaries with eleven or more: never once. - The shape matters too. One short rule sentence after "So, here's what we've seen:" holds 8 times in 10. A two-clause rule holds 2 in 8. A case sentence ("The oak makes its own food using light, so the oak is a plant") is cut to its verdict in every course, whatever the brief says. - Printing a line on screen roughly doubles its chance of being spoken as written. - Brief length and generator settings are not the lever; the same brief rendered twice holds different lines each time.
Why it is your call: the case sentences are the example sequence's fixed frame, which you have asked for word for word; letting the renderer reword them trades that for first-time passes.
Cost of changing it: none to the scripts; the batch tool marks fewer lines. The renderer will shorten case sentences to their verdicts, and the sort shape on screen stays as drawn.
My recommendation: protect two lines (coining and rule), write every rule as one short sentence and print it, and keep the audio edit only for a reworded coining or rule.
A: Protect two lines, rule one short sentence / B: Keep protecting every line, keep editing
10. Does "energy is released" sit beside the respiration line, or above the arrow like "light needed"?
The course says: "Energy is not a substance, so energy is not written in the line. Instead, we say it beside the line: energy is released." (Topic 4, lesson 3; the chip ENERGY RELEASED sits to the right of the strip)
Why it is a question: - Topic 3 prints "light needed" above the photosynthesis arrow, so a student may expect energy above this arrow too. - The quiz offers "Energy is needed, so it goes above the arrow, like light" as a wrong answer; moving the chip would make it the right one. - HS Biology and AP Biology write the four substances in the line and say energy is released beside it. - A typed answer with "(energy released)" after the line is accepted; "+ energy" as a fifth term is refused.
Cost of changing it: one chip position, three spoken lines and one quiz option.
My recommendation: keep it beside the line.
A: Beside the line / B: Above the arrow
11. Build the classification nest from species outward, kingdom last?
The course says: Lesson 1 draws a tiger inside its species box. Each lesson adds the next ring round it: genus, family, order, class, phylum. Lesson 8 draws the kingdom round them all, and lesson 9 reads the finished nest from the outside in.
Why it is a question:
- Texas and the state tests list the levels from kingdom down, so a student will meet them in that order on a test.
- Each level is defined as "a group of related
Cost of changing it: eight scripts and the shared drawing re-sequenced.
My recommendation: species outward, as built; lesson 9 teaches the test's order.
A: Species outward, kingdom last / B: Kingdom first, species last
12. A pet dog and a gray wolf are one species in a practice item. Keep the pair?
The course says: "A pet dog and a gray wolf look alike. They can have pups together, and those pups grow up and have pups of their own. Are the pet dog and the gray wolf one species or two species?" Key: one species.
Why it is a question: - The item follows the taught test word for word: living things of one species have offspring that can reproduce too. - Most authorities count the dog as a subspecies of the gray wolf, so the claim survives. - A student who has heard "dogs and wolves are different animals" will push back, which is the item's point. - Every honest look-alike one-species pair is a domestic animal and its wild ancestor, so there is no cleaner swap.
Cost of changing it: one practice item re-cased on another pair.
My recommendation: keep the dog and the wolf.
A: Keep dog and wolf / B: Swap the pair
13. Coin both "trophic level" and "energy pyramid" in one Topic 8 lesson?
The course says: Lesson 1: "Each feeding step in a food chain is called a trophic level." and "Drawn as bars, one above the other, the levels make an energy pyramid."
Why it is a question: - The standing rule is one coined term per lesson. - TEKS 7.12A names both words, so a test can ask for either. - They name different things: a step in the chain, and the drawing of the steps, which is on screen when the word is said. - Each term has its own recognition item in the quiz, and both are typed in the practice set.
Cost of changing it: a second short lesson for energy pyramid, or the term moved off the video.
My recommendation: keep both in lesson 1.
A: Both terms in lesson 1 / B: Energy pyramid in its own lesson
14. Keep "usually" in the rule about numbers at each level?
The course says: "Usually, there are fewer living things at each trophic level up." (Topic 8, lesson 3: the rule line and the closing screen)
Why it is a question: - One oak tree feeds thousands of caterpillars, so without "usually" the rule is false of a case any student can picture. - The energy rule has no hedge ("less energy is available at each trophic level up"), so the two rules differ in form on purpose. - The HS course gives the oak-tree exception a lesson of its own. - A hedge in a rule line is something the course normally avoids.
Cost of changing it: one word in a spoken rule, its closing screen and four whys.
My recommendation: keep "usually"; the HS course then adds the exception instead of unteaching the rule.
A: Keep "usually" / B: Drop "usually"
15. The gannets' bar at 100 kJ: keep the neat tenth?
The course says: "The phytoplankton in one square meter store about 10,000 kJ of energy in a year, the anchovies that feed on them about 1,000 kJ, and the gannets about 100 kJ."
Why it is a question: - A tenth at each step is the figure the HS course calls an average. - A warm-blooded top hunter keeps less than a tenth, so 100 kJ is generous; "about" is spoken. - A neat tenth lets a student read the three bars at a glance and see the pattern. - The bars are drawn to scale, so a truer, smaller figure would make the top bar a line.
Cost of changing it: three spoken numbers, one drawing and the practice items that reuse them.
My recommendation: keep 100 kJ and record the simplification in the register's scope line.
A: Keep 100 kJ / B: Use a smaller figure
16. Eye colour as the running trait for genes and alleles in Topic 10?
The course says: "One gene carries the instructions for her eye color." (lesson 1) and "The gene for eye color has a brown version and a blue version." (lesson 6, which coins allele)
Why it is a question: - Eye colour is the register's own example, and the one every student can see across a classroom. - Human eye colour is set by several genes, so "one gene" is a simplification the HS course will sharpen. - The line that derived "one gene" from "one trait" is cut, and lesson 6 adds a parakeet's feather colour, a true one-gene case. - The Topic 11 sample runs on pea plants, so a student meets a plant case there.
Cost of changing it: two scripts and their drawings re-cased on a one-gene trait.
My recommendation: keep eye colour, with the parakeet beside it.
A: Keep eye colour / B: Re-case on a one-gene trait
17. The island crickets: name Kauai, or keep the island unnamed?
The course says: "On an island, crickets chirp at night by rubbing their wings together. A few crickets in every hundred hatch with flat wings that make no sound." Then a fly that hunts by sound arrives. (Topic 13, lessons 5 and 6)
Why it is a question: - The real case is Kauai, Hawaii; there the fly came first, and the flat-wing change arose by chance about ten years later. - The lesson's order (the variation there first, then the change in the environment) is the model's order, and it carries the teaching point: a need does not create the variation. - A student who looks the island up finds the dates the other way round. - Naming it would cost two spoken lines in a lesson at 175 words.
Cost of changing it: two lines, and the order of events re-told.
My recommendation: the island stays unnamed, so the model's order holds.
A: Island unnamed / B: Name Kauai
18. "The fern is not extinct" or "ferns are not extinct"?
The course says: "Ferns grow in woods and gardens today, so the fern is not extinct." (Topic 13, lesson 2)
Why it is a question: - Extinct is defined on a kind: "a kind of living thing whose members have all died". - "The fern" names one fossil; "ferns" names the group the rule is about. - Every other case in the topic (horseshoe crabs, sea turtles) is said at the group grain.
Cost of changing it: one word in a spoken line, the forest line and the sorting block.
My recommendation: "so ferns are not extinct".
A: Ferns are not extinct / B: The fern is not extinct
19. Freshness is pushing bank scenes onto unfamiliar animals. Allow a familiar animal in a fresh kind of scene?
The course says: Every bank scene must be new across the whole course, so Topic 12's bank reaches for avocets, dippers, coatis, echidnas, spadefoots, char and tetras, each glossed in two or three words at first use.
Why it is a question: - Your own principle is familiar before unfamiliar; a glossed stranger adds reading load that is not the skill being tested. - The freshness rule exists so no bank item is a lesson item with the nouns changed; the move and the kind of scene carry that, not the animal. - A sheep in a Topic 4 respiration item and a sheep in a Topic 6 genus item test different ideas; no student carries an answer across. - Topic 8's bank already reuses a vole, a weasel and a menhaden once each from other topics' banks.
Cost of changing it: nothing to rebuild; the next read of Topic 12's bank swaps its strangest animals, and later banks follow the new rule.
My recommendation: allow a familiar animal in a fresh kind of scene; keep the ban on the same animal doing the same move anywhere in the course.
A: Familiar animals, fresh scene kind / B: Keep every animal new
20. Five licensed photographs for the new topics' videos. Source them?
The course says: Every figure is drawn from the register. A photograph is proposed only where a real thing must look real: a green budgerigar beside a blue one (Topic 10, lesson 6); phytoplankton under a microscope (Topic 8, lesson 1); a trilobite, a fossil fern leaf and a fossil coiled shell (Topic 13, lessons 1 and 2).
Why it is a question: - A drawn parakeet in two colours reads as a cartoon; the photograph shows the one-gene difference is real. - The drawn bay water carries a magnifying ring labelled "magnified"; a micrograph shows the student the green water is full of living things. - A fossil is a real object in real rock; the drawn glyph carries the label, not the belief. - Each photograph is a one-time still in the video; the page figures stay drawn, and nothing switches from photo to drawing on screen.
Cost of changing it: five licensed stills to source, one cue line each.
My recommendation: source all five.
A: Source all five / B: Drawings only
1. Does "vacuole" alone count as the third plant-cell mark?
The course says: The typed item asks for the three parts a plant cell has that an animal cell never has; the accept list requires "large vacuole", so "vacuole" alone is marked wrong.
Why it is a question: - You ruled the mark is ONE LARGE vacuole, because animal cells have small vacuoles too. - A student who types "cell wall, chloroplasts, vacuole" knows the three parts but not the point. - You accepted "membrane" alone and refused "wall" alone on the same page.
Cost of changing it: one accept list.
My recommendation: refuse "vacuole" alone — the word "large" is the whole point of the mark.
A: Refuse "vacuole" alone / B: Accept "vacuole" alone
Signed off by you, 15 October
Topic 2 lesson 2, the cytoplasm ("great"; the drop of water is no longer drawn round the cell); the Topic 7 intro ("great"; from now on no intro prints the topic title on screen); Topic 7 lesson 5, biotic and abiotic factors ("good"; the closing screen is now two bullets, living = biotic first). Your go for five more topics is in hand.
Signed off by you, 14 October
Topic 3 lesson 3 (golden); Topic 3 lesson 6 (conditions now above the arrow, chlorophyll introduced as the green substance inside the chloroplast); Topic 1 lesson 9 (once in colour, with the word paramecium introduced first); Topic 2 lesson 10 and with it Topic 2, which goes to video next. Topic 3's intro: the dog is being shrunk. The five further topics for your video review: 7 (ecosystems), 11 (Punnett squares), 12 (natural selection), 5 (the kingdoms), 9 (traits and reproduction) — the last three are being authored now.
Applied without asking
Bank calls decided and logged: a chart may sit on a read-the-data bank item (never on a prediction); "CO2" is an accepted typed form of carbon dioxide; sweat, not urine, is Topic 1's excretion case; the coal item keeps its energy chain as the one hard case beyond the plant's body.
Topic 7 decisions taken: the spoken energy sentence returns to lesson 10 (the atom says "trace the path of food energy"); the dead-leaf case stays unsaid (the high-school course counts it biotic, so nothing here contradicts it); the two direction rule lines stay as a plain pair; a sixteenth practice item covers the air atom; "population" is "all the living things of one species in a place", since Topic 6 has coined species by then.
Topic 11 blueprint decisions taken at their recommendations: pea plants in the lessons, animals in the questions; the letter convention set when each allele kind is coined (capital at dominant, lower case at recessive); seven lessons, not five, for the sample; typed share seven of sixteen in the practice set.
Topic 2 lesson 10 keeps "hundreds of thousands" (the arithmetic above).
The five topics closed on 15 October (4, 6, 8, 10, 13), decided under the student test:
Topic 4: "so only oxygen leaves the plant" is now the net sentence Topic 3 gave you ("the plant's photosynthesis takes in carbon dioxide faster than its respiration gives it out, so what leaves the plant is oxygen"); the lit leaf "uses" oxygen; "a living thing takes in oxygen", not "every living thing"; lessons 4 and 5 stay two lessons (141 and 165 words, two observations); Topic 1's respiration sentence is kept beside the sharper oxygen line; the three comparison lessons (4, 5, 6) close on two bullets, the shape you accepted on Topic 7's biotic-and-abiotic close this morning; the practice set is re-cased as fresh scenes (a sheep, a geranium, an apple tree, a turtle's buried eggs, a silkworm) under the standing mixed-set rule; the typed equation accepts "(energy released)" after the line and refuses "+ energy" as a fifth term.
Topic 6: two lessons for species (the breeding test gets its own minute); one lesson for the key; "dichotomous key" coined with a plain gloss and recognised, never typed; no Latin names anywhere; no mnemonic (the finished nest is the memory aid); the phylum box labelled "backboned animals" (true at this grade; the HS course names Chordata and widens the box, never empties it); the horse-and-rhinoceros pair (two families, not one) replaced by sheep and goats; the crab item's "hard shell" is now "coiled shell"; the offspring clause "have offspring that can reproduce too" stays, noted for LIF-049's wording.
Topic 8: manta rays (they eat zooplankton) replaced by menhaden; the energy pyramid drawn to scale, with a note where the thinnest bar is widened to be seen; "count pyramid" never printed (the stems say "drawn as how many of each there are"); mutualism coined, parasitism and commensalism left untaught because no atom carries them (TEKS 6.12B names all three; noted for the register with "and water" for LIF-099); "energy leaves as heat" in every line, energy the thing and heat the manner; the typed trio sits after the sort trio that prints its words.
Topic 10: the nest order cell, nucleus, chromosome, DNA, gene (the register's and the Texas order); the two three-way sorts keep six questions, each verdict twice, your 15 October ruling; a chromosome drawn as one coiled rod, never an X; "two copies of each gene" left to Topic 11; the three causes of mutation as the HS course names them; the practice tail re-ordered so no option prints a word typed later; the tortoise's shell (no such one-gene trait) replaced by a jaguar's coat; "trait" or "feature" across the strand is your open card from 14 October and is not re-asked.
Topic 13: six lessons, one per atom; the three limbs (human arm, whale flipper, bat wing); nothing coined (homologous is the HS word); the island crickets with "about" counts; no dates in years; the fly "drops its young" on the crickets, not "lays its eggs"; the frog's shin (one fused bone) replaced by an elephant's; the second rock wall drawn for its practice item, not narrated; Topic 12's owl-and-mice scene replaced by frogs and a raccoon.
Topic 12's bank, the other open lines: the garter-snake pair stays (that a dark surface warms faster is grade 6–8 physics a student holds); the hard tier is all MCQ (allowed since 12 October); the typed items keep the lessons' cue form; a three-sentence stem is not tagged hard, as Topics 3 and 9 did.
Summaries parked in Topics 2 and 3 as in Topic 1 (nothing deleted). Topic 2 lesson 8 renamed "Plant cell or animal cell?" because it now tests both ways. Topic 3 lesson 2 keeps six questions (the four on-sight sorts stay in reserve as grade 4's); lesson 3 keeps four, its why carried by the attached question. The willow lesson stays taught, not assumed, as your exact-masses ruling treats it. The strand intro video stays (it teaches nothing and is not a summary). Topic 1 lesson 10's typed order closes a run of which-level questions on purpose: that is its quiz, where you put the which-level skill. Option order is not fixed across a topic; the page shuffles every item.
Your rulings, applied
- Topic 1 review (all 12 points), your seven page rulings (arrow "react to make"; "a green plant"; chloroplasts without "only"; three marks with the large vacuole; autotroph and heterotroph atoms; "hotter thing heats" for every band; the inbox), the willow exact with a difference question, reserves left reserved, and the 33 clusters on a simple page (held while Becky reworks the tests).