This report describes a research-practice partnership project between researchers and a group of Years 7 and 8 teachers from schools serving diverse communities throughout Aotearoa New Zealand. The schools represented in the study were demographically and geographically diverse and served urban, mixed, and rural communities in the North and South Islands. The project focused on the English learning area of The New Zealand Curriculum (NZC) and aimed to develop Years 7 and 8 students' metalinguistic knowledge, literary analysis (close reading), and creative writing. Over two years, the researchers supported teachers to support their students to explore six key literary ideas using text sets in an approach called the T-Shaped Literacy Model. Researchers investigated the effects of the intervention on student learning using a quasi-experimental design with a range of repeated measures including measures of students' knowledge of language features and literary elements, close reading of previously unseen literary texts, creative writing, and standardised measures of reading comprehension (PAT) and writing (e-asTTle). The quantitative data suggest that the programme was successful overall in developing students' achievement in key aspects of the English learning area. Importantly, students who participated in the programme ended their intermediate years with significantly higher scores than students who only participated for one year. The authors believe, therefore, that the evidence overall points to the programme being an engaging and effective component of a two-year English curriculum for Years 7 and 8 students.