Intro to Modular Learning

Written By Manisha Snoyer (co-founder of Modulo)

Modular education is a new way of approaching your child’s learning.

In traditional education, most of the education takes place in one location and through one institution, and is uniform for a group.

In Modular education, families pull together a mosaic of resources for their individual chid’s education, drawing from a variety of different organizations and sources:

  • Mastery Learning. 1:1 teaching sessions led by a family member, teacher or subject expert and independent study with digital apps, books or other offline and online resources.

  • Social-emotional learning. Social and educational group activities that align with your child’s interests and give them lots of time to play and learn collaboratively in a peer group.

  • Self-directed education. Unstructured time for self-directed learning, free play, and child-initiated projects.  

  • Community. Field trips, park days, volunteering and social gatherings with an inclusive and diverse learning community. 

  • Support from families, teachers and experts who have experience with a Modular approach to learning to mentor you and guide you along the way.

Here is what this might look like in practice:

Parent participation learning: 

  • Eat dinner as a family, share your day and ask your children questions.

  • Read the news at breakfast (the NY times, WSJ or bedtime stories for younger children)

    • Keep a vocab journal that you develop over the course of the year

    • Pause to ask questions about words or what the author means. 

    • If your child has a question, reflect it back to them, try to find the answer

    • Relate it to your lives or sk them to relate the parts of the text to their own lives. 

    • Try to identify the author’s point of view

    • Get them to identify their point of view

    • Use new words in a sentence

  • Take a walk together as a family once a day

  • Watch documentaries together, discuss and ask questions

  • Seize opportunities for inquiry (learn about types of inquiry)

  • Share what you know

    • Is your passion writing, science, dance? Take some time to share what you know with them (and friends in your community as well)

  • If your child is learning to read

    • If your child is learning to read, follow along with your finger as you read. This reading by osmosis approach 

    • Seize opportunities to ask them to read a word, passage or page.

Mastery learning:

  • Choose 2-3 tools to support math and language arts.

  • Find a dedicated study time 1-2 hours a day when your child can focus on Math and Language arts using learning apps, youtube videos or documentaries, educational games, tutors or secular homeschool curriculum. Try to get a few tools in your wheelhouse that your child can choose from so it doesn’t feel too regimented but more like choice time. Modulo offers curriculum planning support and a mastery learning hour for families looking for extra support with mastery learning.

  • If your child prefers “watching shows” try Khan Academy or youtube channels. Here are some of our favorite educational youtube channels.

  • If your child loves “video games” try apps like Math Tango, Prodigy Games and Get Epic. Here are our 50 favorite mastery-based educational apps.

  • If your child does better with 1-1 instruction, consider choosing a secular curriculum to follow or get a tutor. 

Self-directed learning:

  • Set up an environment that is conducive to self-directed learning

    • Choose 4-5 apps or youtube channels they can use at their leisure

    • Play classical music while they study or play

    • Take your child outdoors for long periods of time

    • Give your child art supplies they can use freely

  • It’s important to give your child a large chunk of time every day when they’re free to pursue  whatever they’re interested in. A lot of American parents tend to pack their child’s schedule full of activities, but it can be difficult for a child to process that much in a day. A few hours of quality time, as opposed to a packed schedule can be much better for learning.

  • Self-directed learning time can be frustrating for parents (especially if in the beginning, their child wants to use this time initially to play video games or watch TV…this will eventually change) but your child has an extraordinary innate drive to learn. Now and in the future, being able to identify what they want and how to find tools to reach their goals will be critical to their happiness and success. If their natural drive and curiosity is hidden right now, that’s all the more reason to to give them space and time to tap into their intrinsic motivation. 

Social-emotional & Collaborative learning:

  • Find a group of friends your child can meet with two to three times a week for a few hours at a time. This can be online, in-person, structured around free play or electives. It’s nice to have at least some of this be unstructured time. Modulo offers digital learning pods and a slack community for families looking for connection and community.

  • Consider encouraging your child to choose a project they can work on with friends, something that they might need to work on over a few weeks, month or year. 

Community

  • Family community: Take advantage of the community of families doing Modular learning to support you. Engage in our slack group, do skill shares where you offer classes to other kids in the community and visa versa, go on hikes together, meet in the park. Modulo has an active and diverse community of families engaged in their children’s learning.

Support

  • Find a mentor: It’s healthy for your child to build relationships with adults other than you. Find a colleague or local expert or grandparent that can chat with them once a week or more. Perhaps another parent might fill this role for them and you can mentor another child in the community. A caregiver or tutor can also be great outside influence. 

  • Expert support: Draw on the help available to you to support your child’s learning. Check in with us when you’re concerned or excited to support your child in a new way. It is impossible to do this alone and there is little research on this new approach to learning. We have experience and are here to support you. Modulo offers 1-1 support for families looking for extra help with Modular learning.

What does a typical day look like in Modular Learning?

Every family’s day looks different and the flexibility is what makes it wonderful! Here is an overview of how some families might choose to structure their day. 

Mornings

  • Family time: Wake up, meditate, stretch, do yoga, take a walk together as a family

  • Parent participation in learning: Read the NY Times, WSJ or other paper together at breakfast

  • Mastery Learning: Study math and language arts in a 1-3 hour dedicated study period

    • Set up your child’s space to be conducive to study (give them a clean space with no distractions/play classical music)

    • Find 2-3 apps, youtube channels or workbooks your child loves. If your child does better with 1-1 support, consider choosing a secular homeschooling curriculum that you, a caregiver or tutor can do with them. 

    • You may choose to engage with your child during this full period or having them primarily work independently with a little 

    • This period words best when it’s also a dedicated study period for you. Either you’re doing your own work while your child studies or you are actively helping your child with their studies.

Afternoons

  • Social-emotional Learning: Play with a group of friends or take a group class two to three-times a week. 

  • Self-directed learning. Ideally, your child will have several hours a day when they can do whatever they want. This time is so important to help them to figure out what they’re interested and give them motivation and tools to learn how to learn. If your child is used to a schedule or being told what to do in school, it might take some time for them to adjust, but having patience with this process is so important for helping them cultivate autonomy and ignite their natural curiosity and love of learning. 

    • Here are a few things your child might do in this time: play outside with you, siblings or friends ; read or write freely; do sports; play with legos; grow plants; do learning apps, watch educational youtube videos;  draw; play video games; do a lesson with a parent (teach them what you know!); Work on a project they’re passionate about. 

    • Here are a few ways to set up their environment to be conducive to learning

      • Take them outside for hours on end. 

      • Give them a dedicated space to study with a computer and good wifi

      • Choose a few educational apps they can work on

      • Let them play video games or watch TV until they get sick of it. (they will)

      • Play classical music

      • Let them be bored & uncomfortable with their free time until they figure out what they want to do

Evenings

Family time:

  • Have dinner together. Talk to each other about your day, ask your children’s questions. Listen to theirs. Engage with each other.

  • Bedtime story OR Read/ and learn together as a family

  • If your child is young, read them a bedtime story every night. Follow along the text with your finger as you read aloud. Ask questions about words, character’s perspectives, what’s going to happen next, to relate it to their own lives. 

  • If your child is older, having a dedicated time where everyone reads together, listens to the radio or watches documentaries helps encourage their learning. You are modeling learning behavior which encourages them to learn. 

Once a week or once a month

  • Community time: Try to find a time once a week or once a month where you can engage with other families doing Modular learning, ideally a diverse group of families of different backgrounds, ages and interests. This can be online, a park meetup or skill share. If you’re looking for a group to join, we offer a monthly online meetup for parents and caregivers.

For families looking for extra support, we offer curriculum planning, digital pods and 1-1 teacher support for families getting started with Modular Learning. Here is some more information about our services. And don’t hesitate to reach out for help!

Manisha Snoyer (co-founder of Modulo)

For the last 20 years, I’ve taught over 2000 children in 3 countries (of all socio-economic backgrounds). I pioneered an English language program in a conflict region in the Middle East. I’ve worked as a bilingual public school teacher at some of the highest and lowest performing public schools and in all five boroughs of NYC. I’ve tutored 18 subjects in three languages to some of the wealthiest families in NYC, San Francisco and Paris to make up for shortcomings in private schools they were paying up to $60,000 a year to attend.

Since 2015, I’ve helped hundreds of parents start microschools (way before this was a household buzzword). I founded CottageClass, the first marketplace for microschools and learning pods that was part of the Techstars 2018 class. In 2019, I created a virtual learning program to help families through the pandemic, a free online math tutoring program (masteryhour.org), and schoolclosures.org, a hotline developed in collaboration with Twilio and 80 other partners including Khan Academy, Revolution Foods and the Crisis Text Line, that served 100,000 families impacted by school closures.

I’ve climbed trees with children in forest schools in San Francisco, and tested new digital apps with kids in seven countries.

I’ve also coached dozens of families at different stages in their homeschooling journey. Most recently, I founded Modulo with homeschooling dad, best-selling author and tech entrepreneur Eric Ries, to help families curate their children’s education, social and childcare experiences drawing from a diverse array of in-person and online resources.


During the last three years, I’ve devoted much of my time to reviewing and testing secular homeschooling curriculum and other resource. I’ve spent the last three years talking to thousands of secular homeschooling families, and poring over tens of thousands of secular curriculum reviews and testing physical curriculum and digital apps for with hundreds of students to find the highest quality, most engaging, personalized learning materials for every type of learner.

I’ve spoken about homeschooling and modular learning at multiple venues including SXSW EDU, NY Tech Meetup, and on the LiberatedEd podcast.

In 2022, Modulo was one of 8 organizations who were awarded the Bridge Grant from the Vela Education Fund to expand access to homeschooling and modular learning to under-resourced communities.

My experience in education and homeschooling has led me to believe that there is no perfect education for every child, but families have an extraordinary amount of wisdom they can apply to building the perfect education for their individual child.

My goal with Modulo is to make it possible for any family to easily build a customized education that their child will love, and that will empower the whole family to thrive, taking into account, social, emotional and academic needs.

I love to answer questions from parents and receive feedback on how we can improve Modulo, so feel free to reach out anytime! I personally answer all the questions and comments readers leave on my blogs.

In my free time, I like hiking, traveling the world, tasting ceremonial grade matcha, enjoying dark chocolate.

I graduated Summa Cum Laude from Brandeis University with highest honors, with a double degree in French Literature and American Studies and minors in Environmental Studies and Peace & Conflict Studies.

And I love to learn!

https://www.linkedin.com/in/manisha-snoyer-5042298/
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