Irondale Middle School Modular Learning Concept Featured On Fox6

IRONDALE, AL (WBRC) –

Alabama’s graduation rate is well above the national average at 89 percent, but the other side of that coin is making sure students who graduate high school are ready to thrive in college.

Administrators are excited about a concept called modular learning. It’s happening at Irondale Middle, putting the focus on supporting the front lines of education: teachers.

Carita Venable is principal at Irondale Middle but is finding a new role in the classroom supporting teachers like Brandon Hatcher.

It’s a fairly new concept of project-based learning: mapping lessons into modules using a variety of resources including Google classroom.

Venable is here making sure students are engaged.

“Are we teaching our students how to think critically and make decisions on their own, and how are we connecting real world and real life activities to what they are doing on a day to day basis in the classroom,” Venable said.

For a literature class, students spent weeks learning about the Holocaust, watching interviews of Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Ellie Wiesel, who just died in July at 87 years old, and reading his bestselling book Night.

They also went to the Holocaust museum in Atlanta. Now, they write.

Cena Davis with Southern Regional Education Board is also in the classroom and says this kind of layered learning is about insuring when these middle school students graduate high school they’ll be more than ready for college.

“They realize with the data they are collecting that students aren’t leaving high school with the educational attainment needed to be successful, so we are really trying to bridge the gap and blur the lines between secondary, post-secondary education and careers,” Davis said.

Davis is there to help support the principal. The whole goal is to make sure teachers get what they need to help students be successful.

See video by clicking the link below:

http://www.wbrc.com/clip/12832409/whats-right-with-our-schools-modular-learning-at-irondale-middle