St Peter's C of E Academy

How reading is taught

An appreciation of books and a love of reading are fundamental to our learning at St. Peter’s Academy.


St Peter’s Academy teaches systematic synthetic phonics. We follow the Letters and Sounds programme for the teaching of phonics. This programme covers: letter names,
letter sounds, reading and writing high frequency words, decoding unfamiliar words, letter formation and sentence structure. The phonics approach continues in the St Peter’s spelling scheme which is used in all year groups.


We teach an early love of books and an enthusiasm for reading. In the Early Years Foundation stage children learn how a book works and enjoy story making in many forms. Comprehension skills are taught including inference and deduction and an understanding and appreciation for the author’s use of language.


We use a variety of reading schemes, including Oxford Reading Tree books and ‘real’ books, all of which are levelled against the colour banding scheme to show progression.