On being Gifted
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🤖 AI Detectives: Teaching Gifted Students to Think With AI—Not Surrender Their Thinking to It
By Beth Smith, M. Ed. | #smithingifted Artificial intelligence is quickly becoming part of the world our students live in. They can ask AI to explain a math problem, generate a story, brainstorm a science project, summarize information, create an image, or answer a research question in seconds. But there is one enormous problem: AI…
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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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Helping Gifted Learners Become Better Thinkers: SEL, Productive Struggle, and Real-World Problem Solving
By Beth Smith, M. Ed. | #smithingufted Gifted students need more than harder assignments. They need opportunities to understand how they think, recognize what happens when learning becomes difficult, manage frustration, make mistakes, consider different perspectives, and keep going when the answer is not immediately obvious. That is exactly what I wanted this curriculum to…
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Using The Smarticles of Giftedness in the Gifted Classroom 📚✨
By Beth Smith, M. Ed. | #smithingifted One of the most important things we can do in a gifted classroom is help students understand that giftedness is not just about being “smart.” It is about strengths, challenges, perspective, growth, and learning how to use your abilities well. That is why The Smarticles of Giftedness by…
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The Global Innovation Lab Is Coming to the NMAGT Fall Institute 2026 🌎💡
This blog post introduces The Global Innovation Lab, a student-centered learning experience designed to help gifted learners tackle real-world challenges through collaboration, creativity, design thinking, data analysis, and systems thinking. It also highlights the program’s upcoming appearance at the New Mexico Association for the Gifted Fall Institute 2026: Unmasking Brilliance, where educators can learn how…
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📚 DIBELS and Gifted Students: What the Scores Tell Us—and What They Don’t
This post explains why DIBELS can be a helpful reading assessment for gifted students, but should never be used as the only measure of their ability or instructional needs. Gifted students may quickly reach the assessment ceiling, show uneven results, or need more advanced reading opportunities beyond grade-level benchmarks. The key is to use DIBELS…
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Gifted Doesn’t Always Look Like Straight A’s: When Bright Students Struggle in the Regular Classroom
This #smithingifted blog explores why gifted doesn’t always mean straight A’s. Gifted students may struggle with missing assignments, motivation, organization, perfectionism, or repetitive work even while demonstrating advanced thinking and creativity. The post encourages educators to look beyond grades and behavior to determine what students truly need. Gifted learners still need accountability—but they also need…
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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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Why Gifted Students Need Problems Worth Solving
Moving Beyond “More Work” to Meaningful Learning By Beth Smith, M. Ed. | #smithingiftef Walk into many classrooms and you’ll see gifted students finishing their work early. Too often, the next step is simply more worksheets, more questions, or more of the same assignment. But gifted learners don’t need more work. They need better work.…
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Why Every Gifted Classroom Needs More Real-World Problem Solving 🌎💡
Gifted students thrive when learning is meaningful, challenging, and connected to the real world. This post explores how inquiry-based learning, STEM, technology, and authentic problem solving help students build critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and innovation skills. Discover simple ways to transform your classroom into a place where curiosity leads learning and every student has the…