This teacher's language arts workbook is part of the 10 Performance-Based Projects series which provides opportunities for advanced learners to integrate language arts topics with other 21st century skills, including public speaking, critical thinking, and collaboration. It offers projects in which students can work actively with 3rd -5th grade language arts content, such as learning different modes of writing and analyzing genres of literature. Projects include creating a political party and writing a political speech, writing and staging a mystery for others to solve, and comparing books by the same author.

The workbook is organized around communication modalities rather than content topics to teach students different approaches to share their learning. The presentation modes include oral presentations, debates, role playing, group discussion, essays and portfolios. This workbook can be a helpful resource for teachers to enrich specific language arts units by offering activities that relate to a specific unit of study with clear guidance on how to guide classroom instruction. Each activity includes a suggested calendar, mini-lessons and worksheets related to the project content and multiple rubrics to assess student performance. Teachers will want to consider if they might need to modify activities and/or provide more support for different groups of students, including direct instruction beyond what is provided and helping students with project planning, organization and execution.

• Provides sufficient and varied types of practice problems to maximize understanding and generalization of the targeted skill/concept
• Manufacturer claims alignment with Common Core/Known Standards
• Presents educational concepts accurately
• Explains answers so students can learn from mistakes
• Better for teaching the skill to new or struggling learners
• Better for practicing or refreshing the skill
• Skills are practiced through authentic, meaningful problems (not just rote practice)

• Appropriate for a broad age range to use and enjoy
• Subject matter and problems are relevant, interesting and authentic to students
• Includes reward stickers
• Visually stimulating and appealing (uses student-centered pictures, colors, and themes)
• Graphics and overall feel of the workbook is appropriate for the target age range
• Relative to most workbooks, fun to use from a child's perspective
• Offers ongoing, progressive challenge
• Overall - Enjoyable. Given the option, students would choose this option

• Provides teaching guidance for adults to support the child and set appropriate goals
• Student should be able to use independently after first use
• Specific topics/lessons are easy to find
• Presents information in multiple formats (voice over, pictures and text, etc.)
• Overall - Easy to use

Each book in the 10 Performance-Based Projects series provides 10 ready-made projects designed to help students achieve higher levels of thinking and develop 21st-century skills. Projects are aligned to the Common Core State Standards, allowing students to explore and be creative as well as gain enduring understanding. Each project represents a type of performance assessment, including portfolios, oral presentations, research papers, and exhibitions. Included for each project is a suggested calendar to allow teacher scheduling, mini-lessons that allow students to build capacity and gain understanding, as well as multiple rubrics to objectively assess student performance. The lessons are presented in an easy-to-follow format, enabling teachers to implement projects immediately.