Talk To Your Baby

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Talk To Your Baby 2020

This year's conference took place on 27 January at Millennium Point in Birmingham.

Thank you to everyone who spoke, listened, asked questions and helped us make the day such a success.

See you next year!

Sign up here to be the first to find out about Talk To Your Baby 2021.

2020 speakers

  • Keynote - Jan Dubiel - the importance of early language as the vehicle for cognition and its role in wider development
  • Deborah Powers - Time To Talk Warwickshire's new toolkit for practitioners
  • Judith Park - the National Literacy Trust's Small Talk initiative and the chat, play, read approach
  • Michelle Peter - the relationship between language processing speed and vocabulary acquisition
  • Dave Neale - the benefits of play in learning and development, and how we can harness them
  • Alison David - parents' perceptions of reading to young children and how to help promote shared reading
  • Jeanne Shinskey and Jessie Ricketts - the impact of lift-the-flap books on early language acquisition, and a new Nuffield-funded project on educational picture books for one-year-olds

2019 speakers

We thoroughly enjoyed Talk To Your Baby 2019 and hope you did too. Thank you to everyone who helped make it such a success.

Download highlights from our 2019 conference.

Thank you to our amazing speakers:

  • Lucy Powell, MP for Manchester Central - Keynote
  • Susie Owen, Deputy Director for Early Years, DfE, - policies around improving the home learning environment
  • Cerys Griffiths - BBC's early years strategy
  • Professor Ludovica Serratrice - language of babies in bilingual families
  • Nick Skinner - singing to your baby
  • Jess Eddlestone and Jenny Smillie - activity in early years settings in Greater Manchester
  • Professor Elizabeth Meins - 'mind-mindedness' and child development
  • Professor Anna Theakston - latest research on the effect of babies' environment on later language learning
  • Tracey Jevvons-Hazard - the evidence base for Nottingham's Small Steps, Big Changes project

If adults talk with children effectively—taking the lead from the child, elaborating on what they say, asking questions, sharing rhymes or songs or books— then children are given the best start in developing the cognitive tools they need to succeed at school.

Early Intervention Foundation, The Best Start at Home, 2015

Previous delegates

2018 delegates can access the presentations from that year's conference. If you are having trouble accessing the page, please email conferences@literacytrust.org.uk.

Find out about next year's conference