I was given a free copy of this book by LibraryThing, in exchange for my honest review.

I'm sad to report that I had a little trouble with this book. I tried to find useful components to use in my 5th grade classroom, but only one of the 10 lessons matched my curriculum and so I started by analyzing that one. Unfortunately, it did not seem to be worth the effort on my part to use it (even though I will gladly put 10 hours of prep work into a solid 2 hour lesson!). I just didn't feel that it offered anything more than my current lessons did.

Then I tried to extract goodies from the other lessons to use in the rest of my curriculum, but wasn't able to find anything of value that was transferable. I would imagine that IF these lessons matched your curriculum, and IF you were willing to find ways to integrate them into your day-to-day instruction, then you might find this book valuable. Also, this might be good for a curriculum administrator looking to pass these lessons out to the grade level they belong to, but I'm merely a classroom teacher who can't find ways to integrate it into my instruction. I increased from 2 stars to 3 stars with this in mind.

My final takeaway is that the book recommends the following performance-based tasks to replace lecture & textbook reading (and they can all be found in the Table of Contents here: https://www.amazon.com/10-Performance-Based-Projects-Science-Classroom/dp/161821.... Unfortunately, the book lacks high-quality resources that would help teachers implement these tasks effectively that are transferable to other units. I agree that these are better than lecture and textbook reading, but would add many more that would honestly be better than even these!
- Oral Presentation
- Debate/Speech
- Group Discussion
- Role-Playing
- Interview
- Exhibition
- Essay
- Research Paper
- Journal/Student Log
- Portfolio ( )

While this book provides teachers with a workbook of ready-to-go projects, the scientific content and teaching is too weak to recommend it. The projects do sometimes require a good deal of critical thought from the students, but many require major resources (e.g. actual physical construction of an newly-engineered mousetrap), have questionable educational value (e.g. constructing a diorama of a biome), or are inappropriate (e.g. putting fossil theory "on trial", more on this below). There are a variety of confusing, misleading, or inaccurate statements in the lesson content, although not an unusual amount in this sort of book.

However, the most major flaw is that very little thought has been put in for the unique aspects of learning and teaching science. Strangely, the project formats are identical to the other books in this series about math and language arts. That means that the book ignores the most basic performance-based project in science: an experiment. None of the projects in the book suggest that students design, evaluate, conduct, or report on a scientific experiment. Only one of the projects asks students to collect and interpret observational data. These are the central practices of science and ought to feature prominently in any set of performance-based science assessments. Here they are ignored.

Another example of where the science has not been thought through is the "Dinosaurs on Trial" project. Here students are asked to role-play parts in a mock trial of the fossil evidence for dinosaurs. This is a great way to learn about features of our justice system, but not at all a good way to learn about science. The jury is specifically instructed to make a guilty or innocent verdict and that their standard is "shadow of a doubt." This is a bad and misleading lesson for science, because "shadow of a doubt" is not at all the standard that scientists use to weigh evidence. The activity also sends a group of students to research and advance the ideas of crackpot denialists. It's not a problem to ask students to evaluate these ideas, but I doubt this is the best activity for it.

The book also does not provide much-needed guidance on how teachers should navigate the inevitable difficulties that performance-based activities like this raise. A teacher deciding whether to implement one of these projects has valid concerns about how to implement the project so that it does not veer into quasi-disaster. For instance, say the fossil denialist case is presented much more competently and the class is left with the impression that fossils are a hoax. How can a teacher step in and correct without undermining the entire endeavor? When students present to each other in front of a class, what approaches work for addressing wildly inaccurate information? Instead of just asking the students to perform a particular skill, how can a teacher help students develop the skills? These are, of course, big questions. Stanley would likely argue that they are beyond the scope of this book. However, the success of these projects rise and fall on effective answers and so some sort of guidance is in order. ( )

Ten exciting, creative projects to promote students' higher level thinking skills through performance-based (project based) learning are included in this book. Aligned to the Next Generation Science Standards, this book includes lesson outlines, project timelines, rubrics, and handouts designed to assist the teacher. Projects involve a variety of assessment formats (oral presentation, debate/speech, group discussion, role playing, interview, exhibition, essay, research, journal/log, portfolios).The real beauty is the creativity in the topics of the assessments, including the creation of models: ecosystem in a biodome, an energy efficient city of the future, and a "friendly" mouse trap. Projects could also put the theory of dinosaurs on trial, visit a zoo, interview a scientist...
This is a great resource for the development of 21st century thinking skills for today's students. ( )

Great collection of practical projects that can be used in the science classroom to move beyond lecture and rote memorization. While these plans are geared for a younger age group as a high school teacher I could see using these projects as a jumping off point for more in depth lessons in my classroom. ( )

A useful resource to supplement science curriculum. ( )