The Lip Dub begins, and this week every Quest block belongs to it. Today the studio finds out what a good one looks like, that the whole thing is only five steps, and exactly when it gets filmed - Thursday of Week 5, nine school days from now, early on purpose so there is a week of margin rather than a night.
By 3:15 today the studio understands that this project will not feel like it is working for two weeks - and has one finished thing on the wall anyway.
The Lip Dub is a list of five things, not a vague enormous project. That board stays up for three weeks.
No exceptions, same as the Trading Cards. A missing face on that wall says something loud.
Learners wrote an actual argument for their song, aimed at the studio rather than at themselves.
Standard of Excellence (Wk 1) gets pointed at during the launch and re-asked about a one-take film. Trading Cards (Wk 2) come back at Exhibition beside their v2s - and if the studio runs the Portrait Wall as a backup activity later in the week, the face goes next to what that person said they were good at.
Standard rhythm. Greet by name. Thinking Puzzle up by the cubbies.
Standard rhythm.
Talking points, not a script. Hit these in your own words - the studio can tell the difference, and the ones that land are the ones you actually mean.
The Tally Keeper posts Friday's numbers before 8:30 and reads the studio averages aloud - Intentionality, Civility, Excellence, Energy. That's the job the role exists for, and without this it never gets done.
One question from the guide: "Which of those four is this week's job?" Take the answer, write it on the board, leave it there all week.
Don't discuss it. Two minutes, then move into the launch. If a number needs a real conversation, that conversation is Wednesday's at Town Hall - and naming it now is what gets it onto that agenda.
The opener (3 min):
Play forty seconds of a Lip Dub. Stop it. "That was one camera, one take, no cuts. Everybody you just saw had one chance to be in the right place at the right second."
Then: "Three weeks on Friday, we show ours to your families."
The core - what makes this different (12 min):
Be honest about the shape of the next three weeks, because this is not a cardboard boat:
Then the five things that actually have to happen, posted on the board and left there for three weeks:
"That's it. Five things. It looks enormous today and it's five things."
The close (5 min):
"Two more things. One: there are jobs behind the camera that matter as much as being in front of it, and they're real jobs, not consolation prizes. Two: this week, every single afternoon is this. Not because I want to grind it - because the studios that make good ones are the studios that walked the route until it was boring. We'd rather be bored on Friday than panicking a week on Thursday."
Three dilemmas ran in Week 3, before the teams went upstairs. This one waited, and it belongs here rather than there: you are being copied on the days you don't notice is exactly the bridge from mentoring one five-year-old into a week where a studio have to be able to rely on each other. Say that out loud - the studio will remember the other three and should be told this one was held back deliberately.
The setup (2 min):
“Think back to your afternoon with Spark. Imagine the learner you sat with has started doing a thing you do. How you sit. A phrase you say. The way you flick the page. He isn't doing it to be funny - he hasn't noticed he's doing it.”
The harder half (2 min):
“Now the version that stings. He's also copying something you didn't mean to teach him. Maybe you sighed when he read slowly - and now he sighs at himself. Maybe you said 'this book's boring' - and now he says it too. You taught him that, and you weren't trying to. What do you do about it?”
The thinking (3 min): 1 minute silent, 1 in pairs, 1 open. Disagreements first.
The move (3 min):
Point at the Standard of Excellence posters from Week 1 while you're talking. The question for the whole week is written up there already: what does excellent look like here? Ask it about a Lip Dub and it gets sharp fast - excellent means the person next to you can rely on you.
Week 4 framing: goals now run against a three-week project. Prompt for anyone stuck: "a habit that helps when you can't see progress yet."
Standard rhythm.
Standard rhythm.
Standard rhythm.
First 15 minutes: Team 4 finish their Spark reflection. They only got a ten-minute capture on Thursday because the boats needed the afternoon, and W3D4 promised them this slot. Everyone else starts D.E.A.R. as normal; Team 4 joins when they're done.
Same four questions as every other team: what worked, what didn't work for me specifically, what I'd do differently, what it was actually like working with a younger learner. Collect all four journals today - the set is incomplete until Team 4's is in it, and Week 4 has no other slot for this.
This is a real persuasive-writing task with a real audience and a real outcome, which is rarer than it should be. Treat it as one.
Standard rhythm. Guide eats with the studio.
Fifty minutes, all of it Lip Dub. The studio needs to leave today knowing three things: what a good one looks like, that the whole project is only five steps, and exactly when it gets filmed. The last one matters most - a studio that knows the shoot is nine school days away works differently from one that thinks it's "sometime before Exhibition."
1 - Reference viewing (20 min):
2 - The five-step board (10 min):
Post it and leave it up until the shoot. The whole project, five things:
Then put the dates against them out loud: "Song by Wednesday. Map and route by Friday. Filmed a week on Thursday. It looks enormous today and it's five things with dates on."
3 - Nominations open, criteria first (12 min):
Give the criteria before the box opens, not after. Otherwise you get a five-minute ballad nominated in good faith and you have to kill it publicly, which is exactly what Wednesday's vote is designed to avoid.
On the board, and read aloud:
Then the box opens. Anyone can drop a song in until Wednesday morning.
4 - Close (8 min) - say the timeline to the studio:
"This week we build all of it. Next week we film it - Thursday. We film early on purpose, because if something goes wrong we want a week to fix it, not a night."
And correct the thing they'll otherwise assume: "Nine days of building before you see a single frame. Three weeks before your families do." They get an answer on Thursday of Week 5, and they watch playback between takes that same afternoon. This is not three weeks of nothing.
Carry forward: the five-step board and the "what could we do" list both stay up until the shoot. They are the two documents the studio will actually use.
The Portrait Wall and Chain Reaction are parked on the Week 4 overview as Backup Activities, written out in full. They are genuinely good and they're there when the studio needs a break from the same song - but they don't get to eat a Quest block that rehearsal needs.
Standard rhythm. The portrait corner comes down and gets stored - it goes back up several times over the next two weeks.
Watch for whoever ran the camera well, and whoever sat for their portrait without performing. Both are worth naming.
One question: "What's the hardest part of this going to be?" Write the answers down - they get read back in Week 6.
Send-off by name.
Talking points for this week's email. Drop these into an AI assistant along with two or three live notes from your actual week - a name, a moment, something that surprised you - and it'll give you a draft in your own voice. The specifics are what make it land; the structure below is just the scaffolding.
The draft underneath is an example of the shape and the tone, not a template to send as-is. A parent who gets the same email as every other parent can tell.
Subject: The Lip Dub starts - and we film it in nine days
Hi families,
The Lip Dub started today - a one-shot music video, filmed in a single continuous take, whole studio, premiering at Exhibition in three weeks.
I was deliberately honest with them this morning about what makes this hard. The cardboard boat took four days and then floated or sank, and either way they got an answer. This one takes three weeks and there's no answer until the last day. Most days they won't be able to tell if it's working. Learning to keep going anyway is genuinely the point.
So each afternoon pairs the Lip Dub with something that finishes that day and ends up on a wall at Exhibition. Today that was a portrait wall - a proper photograph of every learner, taken by other learners, which will hang next to the trading cards they made in Week 2.
Song nominations are open. Your learner has written an argument for theirs. We vote Wednesday.
- [your name]