Performance-Based Curriculum for Science

This guide shows you how to develop a performance-based curriculum based on nationally recommended standards. Use these benchmarks and assessments to take your students beyond knowledge and basic skills by teaching them to be accountable for showing what they are learning. Your students will apply their knowledge in a learning performance can you can both observe and measure.

Educators, parents, business and industry leaders, and community member throughout the nation want students to be able to demonstrate what they learn. Shifting the focus from "knowing" to "showing" means your instruction, curriculum, assessment, and evaluation will be oriented toward having your students apply what they've learning in meaningful ways.

Performance-Based Curriculum for Science offers you a framework for a logical, incremental transition to a performance-based orientation. Provides performance benchmarks to assess progress at Grades 3, 5, 8, and 12. Offers key competencies, concepts, and content that all students should know.


Benchmarks and examples follow national science standards by



Having students identify the problem to be solved
Using multiple problem-solving strategies
Providing real-world applications of problem solving

Also includes templates you can customize and use for teaching your students to "show what they know" and technology connections to apply measurable, performance-based learning to computer-aided classrooms.

Written for school and district wide administrators, professional development specialists, science department heads, and individual science teachers who wish to develop performance-based assessments for their classrooms.