Following pupil consultation, ‘Smart School Council’ has been rebranded Cathedral Pupil Parliament and restructured to help Cathedral pupils learn in a real-life way about how Scotland is governed.
Cathedral Pupil Parliament will continue to give EVERY Cathedral pupil a voice and, under the leadership of our twelve elected House Captains, help drive forward further change and improvement in Cathedral Primary.
Cathedral Pupil Parliament will be organised in a similar way to the Scottish Parliament, with our House Captains forming the Cabinet and leading our six Directorates:
- Learning
- Faith
- Health
- Equality
- Sustainability
- Finance
Every Cathedral pupil will continue to participate in a fortnightly Class Council meeting when a particular topic will be discussed. Everyone’s views and ideas will be recorded electronically and sent to our House Captains for discussion. Based on this information, our Cabinet Secretaries (House Captains) will form short-term committees to take forward current projects and priorities.
Cathedral Pupil Parliament will have its official launch at assembly on Monday 1st September. We’re very excited about this fresh look to pupil voice and pupil leadership here at Cathedral!
As part of the school’s ongoing 150th anniversary celebrations, Cathedral learners will plant 150 daffodil bulbs in the school grounds during the month of September. Goulding’s Garden Centre, Clyde Valley, very kindly offered to donate the bulbs and Mrs Findlay was delighted to pop down to collect them on Monday 25th August. Many thanks to Goulding’s for their generosity. We look forward to seeing a sea of yellow daffodils come the spring!
Mr Young came across this eager bunch of Primary 6 writers in one of Cathedral’s ‘A Team’ learning spaces on Tuesday 26th August. They were working with Mrs Findlay on improving their writing and were thinking about their compositions as a ‘hamburger’, with various different layers (main idea, details, conclusion). Mr Young was very impressed with the group’s focus, engagement, ideas and jotter presentation and looks forward to seeing their writing develop and improve in the coming weeks and months.
As part of Cathedral’s 150th anniversary celebrations, all 500+ members of the school community headed out into the sunshine on Monday 25th August to form a giant ‘150’ in the playground. A drone captured a fantastic birds-eye photograph of Cathedral’s enthusiastic learners and dedicated staff.
A well-established fixture of Cathedral’s weekly assembly is the opportunity for two or three pupils to share an aspect of their recent learning journey with the rest of the school. Cathedral learners know that successful learning isn’t about getting everything right all of the time but about having the right level of challenge, learning from any mistakes we make along the way and persevering towards each ‘Milestone Moment’ when we have the chance to showcase what we can say, make, write or do.
Primary 7 were the first year group to use Cathedral’s new Investigation & Innovation Hub. Their challenge was to work in teams to design a kite and, after a week of designing, constructing and modifying, our young engineers headed out into the playground on Friday 22nd August to try them out.
Primary 1a learners visited Cathedral’s fantastic library for the first time on Friday 22nd August. Our eager readers each chose a book to enjoy in the reading wood before they voted for ‘The Baddies’ by Julia Donaldson to be read aloud by Mrs Laird.
Primary 7 were the very first stage to visit Cathedral’s new Investigation & Innovation Hub on Tuesday 19th August, which has been set up to help take forward Priority 1 in this year’s School Improvement Plan. The hub is an exciting new space for Cathedral learners to collaborate in investigation, enquiry, problem solving and open-ended projects with the aim of developing the four creativity skills:
Primary 7’s first open-ended challenge, carried out in co-operative learning groups, is to design and construct a kite which they’ll test out, adapt and modify later in the week.
Our August – December Family Learning programme has now been finalised. The first ‘universal’ parent workshop, for Primary 1 parents and carers, will focus on phonics and literacy. This takes place on Tuesday 9th September. This is only a few weeks away, so please make a careful note of the date in your diary.
Primary 4a explored the power of words during Health & Wellbeing on Monday 18th August. Mrs Cassidy squeezed a tube of toothpaste onto the desk to help the children understand that once negative or hurtful words are out our mouths, they can’t be taken back and the damage is done. However, one of our Primary 4 learners noticed the toothpaste beginning to form a love heart: a reminder that we should always show our school value of LOVE and, if we do happen to say something that hurts someone, use loving words and loving actions to repair the damage.