giftededucation
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🤖 Why VEX Robotics Belongs in the Gifted Classroom: It’s Not Just About Coding!
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Gifted Students Need Gifted Peers: It’s About More Than Academics
Beth Smith, M. Ed. |#smithingifted | Gifted Education | Learning & Innovation When we talk about meeting the needs of gifted students, the conversation often focuses on curriculum, acceleration, differentiation, and academic challenge. But there is another important component of gifted education that sometimes gets overlooked. Gifted students need opportunities to interact with other gifted…
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Gifted Is More Than Just a Deep Dive!
Gifted Is More Than Just a Deep Dive! Gifted education is about more than providing deeper or more elaborate assignments. While depth and complexity are important, gifted students also need acceleration, curriculum compacting, meaningful challenges, and opportunities to explore new learning. Effective gifted instruction begins by identifying what students already know and determining what they…
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🕵️ Why I Love the Detective Badge in My Gifted Classroom
In the #smithingifted classroom, Detective Badges aren’t just for fun—they represent a mindset of curiosity, investigation, and evidence-based thinking. Students learn to look closer, ask better questions, analyze evidence, solve problems, and defend their conclusions across reading, STEM, coding, history, and more. The badge may be small, but its message is powerful: Don’t just answer—investigate,…
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#smithingifted Teacher Lab: Where Teaching Ideas Get Tested
The #smithingifted Teacher Lab is a place where teaching ideas move from theory into real classrooms. I’ll share the successes, challenges, surprises, and adjustments that come from using gifted education, STEM, robotics, technology, and creative-thinking strategies with real students. But the Teacher Lab isn’t just about my classroom—teachers who use #smithingifted curriculum can share their…
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✍️ When Messy Handwriting Meets a Gifted Brain: Why Cursive May Help
Gifted students often have ideas that move faster than their handwriting. For some students, cursive can help by making writing feel smoother, more rhythmic, and more automatic because letters connect instead of being formed one at a time. Cursive may also encourage students to slow down, notice patterns, and pay closer attention to letter formation.…
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Why I Use Disruption Cards in My Gifted Classroom
Disruption Cards add unexpected constraints to STEM challenges, pushing gifted students beyond simply “getting it right” and into deeper problem solving. By changing materials, requirements, or design conditions mid-project, students practice flexibility, perseverance, systems thinking, debugging, and evidence-based redesign. Instead of rescuing students when something goes wrong, teachers guide them with questions that encourage productive…
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The Goal Is Not the Marble: How Turing Tumble Builds Productive Struggle
By Beth Smith, M. Ed.. | #smithingifted A student releases the first marble. It rolls down the board, hits a ramp, changes direction—and completely misses the path the student expected it to take. The student looks at the board. Then at me. Then back at the board. “It didn’t work.” This is the moment when…
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🧠 #smithingifted Socratic Seminar: Step by Step
Beth Smith, M. Ed. | #smithingifted STEP 1: Choose a Question Worth Arguing About This is the most important step. Do not start with a question that has one obvious answer. Avoid: What did the character do? Instead, ask something like: Was the character’s decision justified? Is progress always an improvement? Which is more important:…
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Stop Doing All the Talking: How to Use Socratic Seminar in the 3–8 Gifted Classroom
By Beth Smith, M. Ed. | #smithingifted One of the biggest shifts we can make in gifted education is surprisingly simple: Stop doing so much of the thinking for our students. Gifted students do not need a teacher standing at the front of the room explaining every idea, asking every question, and confirming every correct…