Talk With Tales for Children (TWiTCH)

The National Literacy Trust has a brand-new partnership with Sheffield Hallam University to deliver Talk With Tales for Children (TWiTCH) programme from September 2026.

This evidence based early years professional development programme coaches early years practitioners in the use of dialogic reading strategies alongside the daily shared reading of traditional tales to support children aged 3 to 4 years old to develop language and early literacy skills.

The Need

Research highlights the importance of story sharing and high-quality adult interactions which positively impact early language development and literacy skills. Evidence from the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) demonstrates that the quality of adult to child interactions is one of the most significant in-setting factors influencing early language development. High-quality interactions | EEF. Storytelling and shared reading activities have consistently been shown to improve children’s language comprehension skills. The importance of reading in early years education | EEF

Programme Aims

• Improve practitioner confidence in supporting children’s communication, language and literacy skills
• Enhance children’s enjoyment and engagement in stories, leading to great confidence to speak, share opinions and give reasons
• Close the language gap among children of different socio-economic status
• Sustain positive changes to develop language rich practice in settings

The EEF Pilot trial by Sheffield Hallam University showed:

• Practitioners had improved questioning and discussion skills, made greater use of reasoning-focused questions and reflection time
• Children showed a stronger enjoyment and engagement in stories, greater confidence to speak, share opinions, and give reasons
• Children were also found to use longer sentences and more expressive language which supported improved reasoning and narrative understanding

What does the TWiTCH programme involve?

Using the traditional tales provided in the TWiTCH resource pack, practitioners will deliver a series of story cycles, each lasting three weeks, as part of regular story time. Daily activities take 10 to 15 minutes.

Week 1: Developing children’s understanding of the story and providing opportunities for discussion about characters and events.

Week 2: Deepening discussion through choice-based activities focused on the moral dilemmas within the stories.

Week 3: Supporting children to apply their story knowledge in play (e.g. through continuous provision), with additional support for children who need it.

The TWiTCH programme is fully funded and all books and materials will be provided free of charge.

Please complete this expression of interest form if you would like to be considered for participation in TWiTCH.

We are currently recruiting early years providers to take part in this fully funded programme from September 2026 to July 2027.

However, when the current year is full, we will continue to welcome expressions of interest for the following year, so please do sign up to get involved.