The TWiTCH Efficacy Trial

The programme will run from September 2026 to early July 2027.

Sheffield Hallam University is partnering with the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) and Durham University to further evaluate the TWiTCH programme. 

Through a randomised controlled trial, the evaluation will assess the impact of the TWiTCH approach on children’s narrative skills, vocabulary, and self-expression. This is an exciting opportunity for your setting to contribute to important research evidence about the role of story time in supporting children’s language development.

Settings that take part in the efficacy trial will receive a financial payment.  Each setting will be randomly allocated to either an intervention group or control group.

• Intervention settings will deliver TWiTCH in story time, with TWiTCH training and coaching support, complete evaluation activities and receive a thank you payment of £575.
• Control settings will continue with their usual story time practice and complete the evaluation activities; but will not receive the programme input. Control settings will receive an enhanced thank you payment of £1000 for completing the evaluation activities.

The TWiTCH programme will be available to settings randomly assigned to the intervention group (see below for further details). TWiTCH is designed to support early years practitioners to use story time more effectively to develop 3–4-year-olds’ language skills. TWiTCH trains early years practitioners to use dialogic reading strategies alongside the daily reading of traditional tales/stories, provided in the TWiTCH resources, to support children’s language development. Practitioners will deliver nine story cycles, each lasting three weeks, as part of regular story time. Daily activities take 10-15 minutes.

Each three-week cycle includes: 

• 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.

Each intervention setting will be supported by a named TWiTCH coach for the duration of the project who will deliver ​​initial two three-hour sessions of TWiTCH training, and three coaching visits in the nursery setting during the project (see timeline for more information).

TWiTCH is designed to train all intervention setting practitioners working with the 3-4-year-old cohort and we would ask that at least two practitioners attend the initial training. Nursery leaders will also be asked to identify a TWiTCH Champion (key contact) who will receive additional online training and networking opportunities, work closely with the TWiTCH team, and support their colleagues with implementation and evaluation activities.

The programme is being delivered by a team at Sheffield Hallam University led by Dr. Fufy Demissie, who will provide TWiTCH training, resources and ongoing support for practitioners working with the 3-4-year-old cohort.

Intervention settings will need sufficient staffing and space to run story time with groups of around ten children, nominate a TWiTCH Champion and take part in TWiTCH training.

All settings will need to allow time for evaluation activities, share parent information with families, and provide pupil data and access for researchers to carry out short pre and post programme child language assessments.

The evaluation aims to work with 132 nurseries settings in a randomised controlled trial (RCT). This means that settings will be randomly allocated to either an intervention group or control group. Half of participating settings will be assigned to the intervention group and will receive the TWiTCH training, resources and coaching, and will deliver TWiTCH with the three-four-year-old nursery cohort across 27 weeks from November 2026 to July 2027. The other half of participating settings will be assigned to the control group and will NOT receive the TWiTCH programme and will serve as a comparison group for the settings receiving the intervention. All settings are required to participate in the evaluation activities.

The independent evaluation will be conducted by Durham University led by Vic Menzies and working with the University of Manchester and with Qa Research (conducting the child language assessments). The evaluation will assess the impact of the programme on children’s language skills, school readiness and practitioner’s story-time practice through collecting assessment data before and after the intervention and comparing settings that do TWiTCH (intervention group) with settings that do not do TWiTCH and continue with story time activities as usual (control group).

Data will be collected from children and practitioners at the start and end of the programme which includes  child language assessments, practitioner and senior leader surveys and audio recordings of story-time practice (at the end of the programme only). The evaluation will also look at how settings deliver TWiTCH through observations of training and TWiTCH practice, sharing of coach records, interviews with setting staff and case studies.  

Settings are randomly allocated to either an intervention or a control group; therefore, settings cannot choose which group they are included in.

Intervention settings receive full TWiTCH training, coaching support, and a TWiTCH Resource pack including traditional tales books used within the story cycles. All settings receive a thank you payment for their time spent on evaluation and data collection:

• Intervention settings: £575
• Control group settings: £1,000