English at Tiffield

“Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.” — Margaret Fuller

At Tiffield Academy, literacy is the thread that connects every stage of learning — from early mark-making to confident, purposeful communication through the written word or expression of ideas. Our goal is to empower every learner to:

• Express themselves clearly and creatively, using spoken and written language to share ideas, emotions, and knowledge.
• Access and enjoy a rich world of texts, building comprehension, curiosity, and a lifelong love of reading.
• Think critically and communicate effectively across all subjects, preparing for success in school and beyond.

We tailor our approach to meet our learners' diverse needs, striving for every lesson to be meaningful and underpinned by high expectations, ensuring every learner — finds their voice, builds fluency, and thrives through literacy.

We will be using Read Write Inc. (RWI) and Oak National Academy as our overarching schemes for literacy. RWI will form the foundation for teaching phonics, early reading, and writing, supporting children until they successfully complete the programme. Once children have secured the necessary phonics and decoding skills through RWI, they will transition to Oak Academy Literacy. Oak Academy provides a broad and engaging curriculum that builds on early reading foundations and focusses on developing children's writing stamina, composition skills, grammar, and vocabulary. Through structured units and modelled writing, children will learn to craft coherent texts across a range of genres, deepening their understanding of audience, purpose, and style. This progression ensures a consistent, high-quality literacy journey from early phonics to confident, independent writing.

At Tiffield Academy, we value reading as a key life skill and are dedicated to enabling our children to develop a love of reading, therefore, becoming lifelong readers. We believe reading is key for academic and future success. So, we promote a holistic approach to the teaching of reading. To do this, we implement a range of opportunities for reading across the curriculum, reading for pleasure and on special days, like World Book Day. A day a week, classes celebrate the love of reading through DEAR (Drop Everything And Read).

At Tiffield Academy, we greatly value the role of our families in extending the reading taking place in school and believe this to be an important partnership.  We would love for you to enjoy stories with your child at least four times each week, for ten minutes at home. This could be your child reading to you or having an adult read to them. When reading at home to or with family members, it is important that the children have opportunities to discuss the books, magazines, comics etc, that they have been reading to develop effective comprehension skills. This can be as simple as pointing out who the characters are.

Creating a love of reading isn’t about pushing books—it’s about sharing stories. When students see reading as a gateway to adventure, empathy, and imagination, they’ll carry that love far beyond the classroom.

As a school, we know that for some families, reading with their children can be difficult, and we are more than willing to help or support families to develop these skills. ‘The Books Trust’ have a range of helpful hints and tips to support families with reading at home. Click here to find more about their helpful guides.

We appreciate and thank you for your on-going support.

The Tiffield Team