When I started using Story Listening (SL) on a regular basis to provide rich language in context to my Novice learners, I heavily relied on Grimm tales, Aesop fables, and children stories with personified animal characters. And so, while the rest of my curriculum had been steadily providing more and more mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors to all my students, my SL stories continued to primarily feature either cis straight body-abled neurotypical white characters or personified animals.
In 2018, my SL stories were even worse than the percentage of books depicting characters from diverse backgrounds (see below): 64% of the characters in my SL stories were cis straight body-abled neurotypical white and 30% were personified animals. My Movie Talks were not that much better (41% and 36% respectively). TALK ABOUT BIAS.
I have been working make deep changes in my stories. Below is a list of stories that are either #OwnVoices or acclaimed by people belonging in the communities featured in the stories. If you have #OwnVoices stories to suggest, please leave them in a comment. I appreciate your input!
STORIES FOR MOVIE TALKS
Hair Love by Matthew A. Cherry
In a Heartbeat by Beth David and Esteban Bravo
The Easy Life by Jiaqi Xiong
Float (PIXAR short) by Bobby Rubio
STORIES FOR STORY LISTENING
Fun fact: when I emailed Jessica Love, the author of Julián is a Mermaid to ask her permission to publish my recording of her story, she said: “Thank you for considering my work— my grandmother (to whom the book is dedicated) was a French teacher, and I know this would have made her very happy. ” THIS MADE MY DAY!!
Thank you for posting this. I am trying to educate myself and be a better person in order to be a better teacher. I love SL and I love the stories that you shared.
I am also trying to honor diversity in my classes and I think this is going to be a great start for me since I find difficult to look for ways in how to honor diversity in my elementary classes. Merci!!
Thank you for posting this. I am trying to educate myself and be a better person in order to be a better teacher. I love SL and I love the stories that you shared.
I am also trying to honor diversity in my classes and I think this is going to be a great start for me since I find difficult to look for ways in how to honor diversity in my elementary classes. Merci!!
Valentina
You are welcome! If you do find more stories, please share! I agree this work is harder with younger students with less language.
I am wondering how you use these videos in the clasroom? Do you show them and discuss in French? Do you create vocabulary lists or chat mats?
Hi Kristen, thanks for your question. I don’t use the videos, I use the stories as Story Listening. Search my website or click on that very first link I shared at the top of the post to learn more about this way of storytelling in the target language. You can also visit my YouTube channel to see examples of Story Listening in French.
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