As a first grade teacher, my favorite part of the day became, without a doubt, direct vocabulary instruction. More specifically, a research-based approach called text talks. Far from “drill and kill,” text talks brought words to life for my students through teaching vocabulary in the context of story time, or read alouds. Text talks allow for choice in what is read and the words taught. This makes the text talk approach to direct vocabulary instruction easy to integrate into existing story time programming. Here’s how…