Writing
Supporting Your Child's Writing Journey
The Ravenbank writing curriculum is designed to provide a broad and balanced education that meets the needs of all children. From September 2025, we are following the award-winning Ready Steady Write from Literacy Counts to develop confident, independent and successful writers with high aspirations. The writing curriculum is research-informed and impact-proven, carefully designed to support all children to master the foundational skills and write for a clear audience and purpose. Through the use of high-quality, vocabulary-rich texts, we provide exciting and meaningful reasons to write. Children are immersed in literature and taught to craft their writing with precision, using a range of pedagogical approaches, including sentence accuracy, modelled writing and shared writing, as well as regular opportunities for editing. We value spoken language as a foundation for writing. Through structured talk, drama and vocabulary exploration, children learn how to organise and express their ideas clearly before writing them down. Our aim is for every child – regardless of need – to write fluently and take pride in their work. We want our pupils to leave primary school as enthusiastic writers, ready for the next stage of their education.
How writing develops through the school
Early Years and Key Stage 1: In the early stages, writing is closely linked with phonics. Children learn to form letters, build sentences, and write for simple purposes like stories, captions, and lists. They’re encouraged to talk about their ideas and rehearse sentences out loud before writing.
Key Stage 2: As children grow, they learn to write for a wider range of purposes, including narratives, persuasive texts, reports, and poems. They focus on planning, drafting, editing, and improving their work. Grammar and punctuation become more advanced, and children are encouraged to develop their own voice and style.
Across All Year Groups: We use a mix of model texts, shared writing, guided practice, and independent tasks. Teachers give regular feedback, and children are encouraged to take pride in their work and to see themselves as authors. Please see our 'Child-Engaged Assessment Policy' which gives you a greater idea of how we encourage children to edit and redraft their writing.
How You Can Help at Home
You play a key role in supporting your child's writing development. Here are some simple and effective ways to help:
Encourage Reading: Reading widely helps children absorb new vocabulary, sentence structures, and ideas they can use in their own writing.
Talk Together: Discussing books, experiences, or even what happened during the day helps children practise putting their thoughts into words.
Write for Real Purposes: Let your child help write shopping lists, birthday cards, or keep a journal. This shows that writing has real-world value.
Celebrate Their Efforts: Praise the ideas and imagination in their writing, not just spelling or neatness. Encouragement builds confidence!
Support, Don’t Correct: When helping, ask questions like “What might happen next?” or “How could you describe that?” rather than focusing too much on mistakes.
Our writing progression document (below) shows you what is the writing outcome and purpose and what is taught in each of the key areas of writing development (grammar, sentence structures, text features and punctuation). Our units of work document shows you the texts that children will encounter during this academic year.