"Oh no! They have to write parody." All the teachers in our five-class primary school have cried out at some aspect of teaching writing at one time or another. Prior to the introduction of the literacy hour, writing had always been an area of concern among staff. In the last two years we have worked hard to implement the strategy and feel we are beginning to make some headway with the teaching of writing.

Our aim was to give children greater access to the tools needed for writing. We have developed spelling boxes that have a range of resources for children to use both in guided and independent sessions. Each group has its own box and its own spelling list book within it, in which children collect spellings as they study. These may be phonetic patterns or topic-based. Also in the spelling box, wherever possible, spelling cards are included which are made up once the children have studied them, for example, 'ee' words on a tree, 'ie' spellings on a tie. Enlarged laminated versions are also on display.

Children also have word-list books, alphabetically ordered, which they use in all their lessons, where they 'have a go' at the spellings before seeking help and where they practice misspelt words using the 'look, say, cover, write, check' method. There are also a variety of dictionaries and a thesaurus.

We have developed editing, or 'Put it right' cards, with examples of what teachers' marking means and what children are expected to do when they redraft work. Children are used to redrafting each other's work in guided and shared sessions. Although the process was strange to them at first, the children now offer constructive comments in a positive and encouraging way. This editing process has helped them begin to check work and redraft with greater independence, for example, my Year 3 children now highlight their misspelt words as they write and return to edit them later.

We feel children's writing has improved primarily because of the greater range of texts they now read in the literacy hour. Before attempting to write children can explore various genres and experiment with styles of writing. We plan a balance of reading and writing activities and the writing sessions follow on from children's reading experiences.

We are developing a range of planning and writing frames. By using these in shared writing, children are becoming more confident with the various writing styles. They have been able to use the frames first as a way of gathering their ideas then as a support to assist their guided and independent work. The frames are used in shared and guided sessions.

We set the children writing targets each term, based on assessment from the previous term. These are in evidence, whenever they write, in the form of bookmarks, and the children refer to them regularly. There are also class targets for the whole class to focus on. When we started to implement the strategy we felt it important to designate time to discuss literacy each week. As most staff meetings were literacy based this hasn't been too difficult, but we have made it our aim to have 10 minutes each week to discuss issues and bring along any ideas, resources and examples of good writing. This has helped us share ideas and overcome difficulties. We also collected examples of planning and resources for each week in each year group. This resource bank has been great to dip into during this second year.

The lead teacher scheme, where teachers applied to observe good practice of a number of lead teachers, has proved very successful, allowing teachers in primary and secondary school the ...chance to spread ideas back to their colleagues. As a lead teacher, I was observed, and we observed colleagues in our own school, gaining greater insight into how children approach writing. We intend to keep up these in-school observations in future.

We ended the first year of the strategy with a literacy open week when parents were invited to come in and assess children at work during the hour. We were able to show examples of good work and we published some of the children's writing, which parents bought. This led some parents to form a group making storysacks.  The sacks have been a great source of enjoyment for all pupils and have led to some good descriptive writing.

Although we don't yet feel we've quite 'cracked' writing, we all now agree that the structure of the literacy hour is beginning to help us on our way.

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