We used Actively Learn to summarise stories. Students had to identify key parts of the text and draw these into frames, similar to a graphic novel but without text.

In class we have been reading stories on Actively Learn. Mr. Birnie assigned me a story called The Elephants Nose. Here is my drawing and summary.

In the beginning, elephants had short, stubbed noses. One time, the elephant went over to the crocodiles lake and was drinking from it. The crocodile was furious, so he went over and grabbed the elephants short nose and tugged. He tugged and tugged and tugged. By the end, the elephant's nose extended. It was a long trunk, crocodile just pulled it's nose and made it longer. That is how the elephant got it's long nose, its trunk.             Autumn

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This is a story about The Elephant's Nose, and we had to draw a picture summery on our reading. Each frame of the picture shows an important part of the story

1.   how the elephants nose was short
2.   he was off for a drink of water from the dried up pond and a crocodile was there and the elephant said go away go to your pond but he refused
3.   so they had a fight and the crocodile
4.   the crocodile made the elephants nose longer by biting the end of it
5.   one day a toad was on its back getting across the river also the crocodile was shaking the toad off its back. because he was getting tired of taking the toad across the river
6.    they came across the elephant and got mad and squirted the crocodile and toad with lots of mud and they left the elephant alone from then.       Jack
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I read a story called the lottery by Shirley Jackson and it was about a small village that had an old tradition called 'the lottery'. Some of the other villages around had stopped the tradition but this village kept on going. All the families met in the village center and they were called out one by one to take a sheet of paper out of a black box. All of the sheets of paper were blank except for one, which had a huge dot on it. The person with the dot on their paper got stoned to death.  It's not explained why this happened.

1. A small village in the mountains

2. Mr summers waits on the stage for everyone to collect their paper
3. Tessie Hutchinson gets the black dot paper
4. The kids go to get their stones
5. Tessie gets scared and cries
6. the villages surround her and she is shouting that its not right
7. Old man Warner and the other villagers walk up to kill her
8. Tessie is dead on the ground with stones around while she is holding her sheet........

Daniel