The teaching of English at Greenfields Community School, aims to prepare pupils for the world around them by developing their writing, reading, speaking and listening skills. Reading is at the heart of our English curriculum, and teachers work hard to foster a love of reading by immersing pupils into language and literature-rich environments. By exposing pupils to texts that operate as mirrors, windows and doors, we hope that our pupils will learn to draw upon these structures and authorial style to inspire their own pieces, as well as to help them make connections with the world around them. Throughout their time at Greenfields Community School, we aim to expose our pupils to a wide range of writing opportunities, which place an authentic audience and purposes at the heart. Children are taught to draw upon high quality vocabulary to create meaning for their reader, whilst manipulating and experimenting with grammatical features and sentence structures, supported by developing transcriptional skills.

We recognise the importance of pupils building upon strong foundations, and promote this ethos by ensuring that pupils in their earliest stages are given plenty of opportunities to develop oracy skills and storytelling. We also place great emphasis on the teaching of reading, which is achieved through a consistent, rigorous approach to the Little Wandle Phonics Programme.  Reading at Greenfields Community School aims to develop confident, fluent readers who read for pleasure, meaning and knowledge. Our approach towards reading begins by building strong foundations in the Early Years, where we prioritise delivering secure, systematic progression in phonics learning.

Adopting Little Wandle ensures that our school prioritises systematically and cumulatively, working towards children being able to decode any unknown words in age-appropriate texts by the time they complete the programme.

We hope that by the end of their journey at Greenfields, our children will be confident and fluent readers and writers, who draw upon the world around them for inspiration; develop a passion and enthusiasm for reading, and most importantly understand the pleasure that can derive from it.