Our Lady of Good Aid Cathedral Primary School

This week, our young learners have been busy developing their curiosity and understanding of the world through a wide range of playful and purposeful experiences. Outdoors, the children became safety assessors, carefully exploring their play areas to spot potential hazards. They discussed how to make the environment safe for everyone and recorded their findings through mark making, linking literacy with real-life risk assessments and growing as responsible citizens and effective contributors.

Across the nursery, discussions have focused on the wonders of the sky. Children have been learning about the difference between day and night, sharing their thoughts about the sun, moon, and stars, and deepening their understanding of how the world around us changes. This month, our focus has been ACHIEVING. Children have enjoyed walks around the school campus, meeting staff members—including our senior leadership team—and learning their names. These experiences are helping them build confidence beyond the nursery environment and develop a strong sense of belonging within our school community.

Our role-play areas have been alive with creativity. Learners visited their “local shop,” using coins to buy ingredients before preparing imaginative recipes back in the kitchen. This engaging play supported numeracy skills such as counting and money handling, while also encouraging rich communication and collaboration.

We were delighted to welcome back Hannah, who introduced us to her beautiful baby girl, Connie. The children were thrilled to meet baby Connie and showed curiosity and kindness as they talked about families and how we care for those who are special to us. Congratulations to Hannah and her family on their wonderful new arrival!

Good attendance makes a significant difference to your child’s progress and attainment. Every school day really does count!

Cathedral’s overall pupil attendance currently stands at:

94.62%

This is just below our target of 95%. With your continued support, however, we’re confident we can reach and exceed this goal.

We are very grateful to all parents and carers for helping us sustain high levels of attendance across the Cathedral school community. A helpful leaflet explaining attendance percentages is available via the link below.

Attendance table

Cathedral’s Ignite Junior Chaplaincy Team launched an exciting new club on Tuesday 11th November. ‘Scripture Squad’ will meet each week to give Cathedral learners the chance to hear and reflect on stories and messages from the Bible, and to think about how these lessons can be lived out in their everyday lives.

Many thanks to Ignite for their commitment to keeping faith alive and active in Cathedral Primary.

The final Investigation & Innovation Hub family learning sessions took place on Tuesday 11th November. The two workshops began with a presentation from Mrs Duffy on how activities within the hub fit naturally into Cathedral’s overall Active8 approach. Mrs Duffy went on to explain the importance of Cathedral Primary helping learners develop skills for life and work in the 21st Century, including creativity, collaboration, adaptability and persistence/grit.

Following the presentation, parents and carers worked alongside their child to get a feel for the types of exciting, open-ended projects which take place in the hub.

Here at Cathedral, we’re always looking for new ways to make learning exciting and engaging — and our newest addition, Marty the robot, is doing just that! Over the past few weeks, Primary 6b have been leading the way by piloting the use of Marty in their classroom. On the in-service day, Monday 17th November, Mrs McCulloch will provide hands-on training for all teaching staff to help everyone get to grips with our ten new robotic friends.

If all goes to plan, our Family Learning Programme (January–June) will include a special session where parents and carers can meet Marty and enjoy some fun computer coding activities alongside their child. Watch this space!

Gillian has been a ray of sunshine in Cathedral’s kitchen for an incredible eighteen years, always ready with a smile, a laugh, and an occasional extra helping! On Friday 7th November, Gillian hung up her apron and hairnet for the last time to start an exciting new chapter as a Support Assistant at Firpark Primary.

Cathedral school community will greatly miss Gillian’s warmth and humour, but we wish her every success in her new role.

On Friday 7th November, an impressive array of Viking warriors and gods took to the stage for Primary 3’s learning showcase. The children led their audience on an exciting journey back in time, sharing fascinating facts about Viking daily life, jobs, clothing, trading, invasions and beliefs.

There was plenty of humour too, as the boys and girls demonstrated their Viking “skills” of raiding and pillaging, before striding down the catwalk in a lively Viking fashion show! The performance concluded with a rousing rendition of Vikings Rock, which had the whole audience clapping along.

A huge well done to Primary 3 for presenting their learning in such a creative and engaging way, and to their teachers for all their hard work in preparing the children for this special event.

Our nursery learners have had a very busy week, full of curiosity, creativity and hands‑on exploration. To mark Bonfire Night, the children enjoyed talking about the colourful displays they had seen in the night sky and shared their own experiences of fireworks. We discussed how to keep safe during celebrations and listened carefully to the different sounds fireworks make – pops, bangs, crackles and fizzles. Inspired by these sounds, the children expressed themselves through art, music and imaginative play, creating their very own firework displays in the playroom.

In numeracy, our young learners explored measurement in a practical way, using their own hand spans and foot spans to measure objects around the nursery. They compared lengths and sizes, confidently using language such as longer, shorter and the same.

Our learning also took us out into the community with a local walk to the shop. The children had the chance to use real coins to pay for items, giving them valuable experience of handling money and recognising numbers in everyday life. This was a fantastic opportunity to connect classroom learning with the wider world.

Back in nursery, the children became scientists for the day as they experimented with making their own “lava lamps” using water, oil and food colouring. They observed closely as the liquids behaved differently, noticing that the oil floated on top of the water and that the colours did not mix.

It’s certainly been a week full of discovery, imagination and fun. Well done to all our nursery children for their enthusiasm and brilliant learning!

After an incredible thirteen years of coaching football at Cathedral and Firpark, Coach Willie officially hung up his whistle on Friday 6th November to devote more time to his other passion of hillwalking. To mark the occasion, Willie was presented with an engraved cup and cash gift, along with a gift voucher and wine from the Parent Council.

On behalf of the entire Cathedral school community, we extend our heartfelt thanks to Willie for his dedication, enthusiasm and commitment over so many years.

On Thursday 6th November, Primary 7 learners were set a STEM Challenge of creating a fully functional zip line.  Using K’Nex, these budding engineers planned, solved problems, built and modified their design to allow Bob to take the leap of faith down the zip line.  Their next step is to design a safety harness for Bob!

On Wednesday 5th November, Primary 7b explored chemical reactions by creating their own mini fireworks. Our young scientists carefully investigated variables and reflected on their learning to make sure their experiments worked perfectly and produced the much-anticipated “BANG!” It goes without saying, they had a blast in the process!