Online assignments help students make up missed days

ELKHART, Ind. -- Trinity Lutheran School in Elkhart had five snow days this school year. The principal says the school is using the internet to work with students at home - and they have already made up two snow days with online assignments.



By the fourth snow day of the year-Trinity Lutheran sixth grader Megan Hansen says she was actually beginning to miss going to school.

 

"I'm just sitting there going OK, I can't go outside, it's too cold, I've already read my books, well what do I do? Sit here? Wait until it's time to go to bed or dinnertime," said Hansen.



"We just thought there has to be something else we can do that doesn't interrupt learning any longer so we decided to do some online activities for two days of instruction," said Sandy Price, Principal of Trinity Lutheran.



Because Trinity Lutheran is private, they have no state restrictions on how they make up snow days. So price got creative.

 

"Each of the teachers worked on providing activities, suggestions and assignments and provided them through email to start and then used other methods like Google docs and just online activities and things like that to keep the kids engaged with learning," said Price.



"I think that it was definitely more fun than going to school," said Hansen.

 

Even her mom got in on the fun.

 

"It brought our family closer as a family because we had to sit down together and watch the video and answer questions and she thought that was pretty neat," said Hansen.

 

Because online assignments have been so successful, price is already gearing up for next winter.

 

"It's really something that in the future we'll plan to do and be really specific about it. We actually already have it planned for our first snow day next year, if we have a snow day," said Price.