A song becomes a floor plan. The studio walks the actual route with the actual song playing, discovers the first version is too ambitious, and fixes it - two weeks before that discovery would be expensive. Nobody's name goes on anything today.
By 2:40 today the song is a written map with locations and timings that the studio has physically walked - and no learner has been assigned anything.
Route decisions were made on foot with the song playing. A paper plan would have survived until Week 6 and then failed.
Not "verse two." Whatever they called it. Invented names get remembered and used.
Section, name, time, location, group size. On the wall. Owned by a named learner.
The handoff idea from Tuesday's chain reaction becomes the technical vocabulary for the whole Lip Dub - call it by the same name. The five-step board from Monday gets its second tick.
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 opener (3 min):
"Today we map the song. Tomorrow we assign the moments. Those are two different jobs and if we do them at the same time we'll make a mess of both."
Say why plainly: "If we map while we're thinking about who gets what, everyone argues for the section they want instead of the section that works. So today, nobody's name goes on anything."
The core (12 min):
Teach the vocabulary, because they'll need it for two weeks:
Then the constraint that shapes everything: "The camera can't teleport. If the chorus is in the reading corner and the next verse is in the hallway, someone has to walk that, in time, while the song keeps playing."
The close (5 min):
"Today we're going to walk the building with the song playing. Bring your ears."
Standard rhythm.
Standard rhythm.
Standard rhythm.
Standard rhythm.
These get read aloud during the afternoon map and they're surprisingly useful - a learner describing a section vividly is doing the studio's imaginative work for it. The best ones go in the Exhibition programme.
All studios together.
If there's a slot for a studio update, a D2 learner takes it - one minute on the Lip Dub, and an invitation to Exhibition. Ask someone at breakfast, not on the walk over.
Standard rhythm. Guide eats with the studio.
Today the song and the route get joined together, and the studio walks the whole thing with the music for the first time. The camera can't teleport - if a section takes eleven seconds and the walk between two positions takes fourteen, the map is wrong and today is when you find that out. This is the block that makes Week 5 possible.
1 - Map the song properly (15 min):
2 - The storyboard (12 min):
Draw the route as a physical strip the studio can walk along - one panel per section, in order, on the floor or a long wall.
3 - The first full walk with the song (18 min) - non-negotiable:
4 - Close (5 min): "Where did the camera arrive before you were ready?" Those are tomorrow's fixes, and the same question opens Week 5's blocking rehearsal.
Carry forward: the map with real timings, and the storyboard. Between them they are the specification for the shoot. Photograph both before you leave.
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.
Route markings stay down - that's the one thing maintenance doesn't tidy away for two weeks. Say it explicitly or someone conscientious will remove it all.
Look for whoever gave up the section they obviously wanted because it didn't work geographically. That's a real cost paid quietly.
One question: "What did walking it tell you that the board didn't?"
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: Turning a song into a floor plan
Hi families,
Today the studio worked out the shape of the video. They broke the song into sections, named them themselves - the names are much better than the technical ones - and then walked the entire route through the building with the song playing on a speaker, timing whether they could physically get from one place to the next before the lyric arrived.
The first version of the route was too ambitious, which is exactly what we wanted to find out today rather than in two weeks. They fixed it on their feet.
Deliberately, nobody was assigned anything today. Mapping the song and deciding who does what are two different jobs, and doing them at once means everyone argues for the section they want instead of the one that works. Assignments happen tomorrow, and every learner gets a moment.
- [your name]