I enjoyed reading the examples in the book about how teachers have had students work on engaging problem-solving that directly connects to the world outside of school. We see these types of claims in advertising all the time and knowing how to read and assess the information in those ads is lifelong skill.
Working with 4th graders, I try to incorporate things like this as often as possible. Recently, when the meteor hit in Russia, we discussed the information in the news and did some activities to answer questions the students had. First question: how does a rock explode? This baffled them. When we watched the videos and you could hear an explosion in the background, we talked about how/why it would make that sound and blast a hole into the ground. It didn't hurt that we were studying the solar system at the time.
We scoured the news for information and I found a great interview with a physicist on NPR that described the meteor and gave great information about how fast it was going, etc. We tested the theories by making snowballs outside and making them as hard as possible using water so they became iceballs. Students then threw these iceballs as hard and fast as they could at a brick wall and we watched the iceballs "explode". We figured out how fast the ice was thrown and compared that with the speed of the meteor (7 miles per second).
They loved getting the information about how many feet in a mile and how fast was their iceball going in m.p.h.? How long did it take to throw an iceball 10 feet and how does this relate to the meteor? If it was traveling at 7 miles per second, how many miles per hour was it traveling?
It all came from students being curious about the meteor during science class and my jotting down questions they had. We talked about how we could answer those questions and went about designing an experiement that answered those questions. I'm sure there were flaws in our design and implementation but for a bunch of 4th graders, it was a very fun, hands-on way to answer questions they had about an event in the real world.