Talk To Your Baby

Talk To Your Baby is our annual conference with a focus on language acquisition in the first 1001 days, and a key strand of our early years activity. The conference is a cross-sector summit of thought leadership and best practice, with speakers from academia, policy and public health. The aim of the conference is to advance the discussion around how to improve children's reading, writing and speaking skills and enhance the life chances of future generations.

The National Literacy Trust has a long history of working in the early years sector, directly changing childrens' lives through literacy. Below is a small selection of our work. Remember you can always contact us to find out more.

Early Words Together

Our flexible and evidence based programme to improve literacy skills with families in a nursery setting. Proven to improve children's language development and parental engagement, this programme has been stringently evaluated and implemented across the country.

We have also developed Early Words Together at 2, Early Words Together at 3 and Early Words Together for Multilingual Families. The best way to find out more is to get in touch with the team.

Small Talk

Small Talk forms part of our home learning environment initiative, run with the Department for Education (DfE). Judith Parke presented on the project as part of the conference, and outlined the need within the most disadvantaged communities in England. Children from these communities start primary school with a vocabulary 19 months behind their peers, a gap most will never recover from.

Small Talk works to combat this issue through local events where volunteers model chat, play and read activities from our new website (small-talk.org.uk). Families can also sign up to our monthly newsletter. This targeted communication will provide parents with a new activity each month to try out, as well as providing another nudge towards doing these activities more often as part of their day-to-day routine.

HELLO improvement framework

This self-report and improvement framework can be used by practitioners and settings to review their own practices and implement positive changes to their communication, language and literacy provision. The framework focuses on three key areas, partnerships with parents, skilled practitioners and enabling environments.

For more information, read the final report from HELLO in Manchester.

Bilingual Quick Tips

We have created a series of bilingual quick tips, in 19 different languages, for parents and early years practitioners to help children develop good talking and listening skills.

If the language you need isn’t listed, we have created a blank template for each topic so that you can adapt it to the desired language.