This paper examines how 15 London social enterprise nurseries undertook a short pilot study to ascertain how to successfully replace a formal reading scheme with the Whitehurst and Lonigan dialogic reading (DR) approach. DR has shown to work very successfully with children from poor and disadvantaged backgrounds, which is the focus group of the nurseries which also use a specific social pedagogy framed within the cultural capital of language and literacy to support children's longer term educational success. The organisation adopted an action research model to constantly review its teaching methods and resources to ensure the most effective and appropriate delivery to children.