STEM & Robotics
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Every Drop Counts: Turning Water Conservation into a Real-World STEM Challenge
Global Innovation Lab: Every Drop Counts challenges students to become water detectives, systems thinkers, and innovators. Through research, water audits, collaborative design, and persuasive presentations, students create realistic solutions to reduce water waste while considering people, the environment, cost, safety, and unintended consequences. This hands-on STEM experience empowers students to see that protecting our water…
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10 Creative Ways to Use micro:bit in Your Elementary STEM Classroom (Plus How FarmBeats Adds Real-World Rigor)
By Beth Smith, M.Ed. | #smithingifted The BBC micro:bit is one of my favorite STEM tools because it does far more than teach coding. It transforms students into engineers, scientists, inventors, and problem-solvers. But here’s something many teachers don’t realize… You can take your micro:bit lessons to the next level by pairing them with Microsoft…
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FarmBeats for Students: Hands-On Agriculture STEM with micro:bit (Grades 3–8)
Discover how FarmBeats for Students and the BBC micro:bit bring agriculture, coding, and engineering together through engaging, hands-on STEM activities. This blog explores how students can collect real-world data, solve authentic farming challenges, and develop critical thinking, problem-solving, and computational skills while preparing for the careers of tomorrow. Perfect for teachers looking to make STEM…
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Back to School in the Innovation Lab: Where Curiosity Comes First 🚀
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Why Scratch Coding Is More Than Just Programming: Building Thinkers, Problem Solvers, and Future Innovators
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Rubber Band Racers in the Gifted Classroom: Engineering, Energy, and a Whole Lot of “Try Again”
TeacherGeek 2.0 Rubber Band Racers turn a simple STEM build into a powerful gifted learning experience. Students explore force, motion, energy transfer, friction, measurement, data collection, and redesign as they build, test, and improve their racers. This hands-on challenge encourages problem-solving, perseverance, and engineering thinking while giving students a fun reason to collect evidence, analyze…
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Learning Alongside My Students: Exploring Lopaka in The Global Innovation Lab
In this #smithingifted blog post, I share how I am exploring Lopaka as a creative tool for The Global Innovation Lab. Working with Ivan Guzman and Mikhail Ilan from Lopaka, I am learning how students might use design, coding, sensors, robotics, and small display screens to turn real-world ideas into meaningful prototypes. As we begin…
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Building a Coding & Robotics Continuum for Gifted Learners 🤖💡
This blog explains how the #smithingifted Coding & Robotics Continuum organizes STEM tools into a purposeful, 3-year learning pathway for 3rd–5th grade gifted students. Instead of using coding and robotics as random activities, the continuum helps students move from introduction to developing skills to strong, independent use across four nine-week cycles each year. It highlights…
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Adding Turing Tumble to the #smithingifted Curriculum
I am adding Turing Tumble to the fourth nine weeks of each year in the #smithingifted curriculum as a hands-on computational thinking milestone. Students work through twelve Google Sheets across 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade, and Turing Tumble gives them something exciting to look forward to while reinforcing logic, perseverance, debugging, and problem-solving.
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📊 Google Sheets in the Gifted Classroom: Building Data Literacy for Future Innovators
By Beth Smith | #smithingifted Could Google Sheets Be the Most Underrated Tool in Your Gifted Classroom? When most teachers think about Google Sheets, they think about gradebooks or budgets. In my gifted classroom, it’s something entirely different—it’s a tool that helps students think, collaborate, and solve real-world problems. My students use Google Sheets to…