Our Lady of Good Aid Cathedral Primary School

Our nursery learners donned festive outfits on Monday 16th December for an energetic Santa dash to raise money for St Andrew’s Hospice. A representative from the hospice was delighted to visit Cathedral nursery on Wednesday 18th December to receive a cheque for £200. Well done to our incredible nursery athletes!

Cathedral pupils partied the morning away on Wednesday 18th December at their year group Christmas parties. The children looked absolutely fantastic in their outfits and thoroughly enjoyed the games, dancing and party food. Santa Claus even made a special visit to our Primary 1 children and Mr Young was delighted to hear every Cathedral pupil is on the nice list!

There ain’t no party like an OLGA party!

As part of our Campus Connections programme, Cathedral and Firpark learners have worked together with ‘Projectability’ over the past few months on a joint art project. The beautiful mural was unveiled on Monday 16th December and will now take pride of place in our shared dining hall.

Cathedral gym hall was packed out on Tuesday 17th December for both performances of this year’s infant nativity, ‘Wriggly Nativity’. The audience was whisked back 2000 years to the Holy Land, where the first Christmas was retold through a humorous storyline and an array of fun, toe-tapping songs.

Well done to our Primary 1 and 2 learners (you were FABULOUS!) and many thanks to teaching and support staff for all your hard work getting things ready for the big day. Particular thanks to Mrs McCoy, director and choreographer extraordinaire, as well as ‘Uncle Joe’, our lighting and sound engineer. What a team!

This Primary 6 learner was exceptionally proud on Monday 15th December when he heard that he had come second place out of literally hundreds of entries in the annual Knights of St Columba Christmas art competition. His beautiful image of the Holy Family in the stable clearly caught the eyes of the judges!

There have been lots of bugs going around in recent weeks and this has had a negative impact on pupil attendance. As of Monday 16th December, Cathedral’s overall pupil attendance is:

92.6% 

This is a worrying drop of 2.11% since the end of October and takes us below Cathedral’s attendance target for this session.

Although we know the reason for this drop, it is vital we get our attendance back up above 95% and sustain this until June 2025. Please can I ask all parents and carers to ensure their child is in school throughout this last week of term. Learning continues and, of course, we have parties, the pantomime and Movie Duvet Day to look forward to. EVERY SCHOOL DAY COUNTS!

A helpful leaflet about attendance percentages can be accessed via the link below:

Attendance table

This Primary 7 learner received a prestigious trophy on Saturday 14th December when he was awarded Motherwell Phoenix FC Manager’s Player of the Year 2024. The award is in recognition of his incredible hard and dedication throughout the year. Many congratulations from everyone here at Cathedral!

 I am becoming aware of the importance of celebrations, festivals and customs in Christian people’s lives. (RME 0-03a)

Our young learners have been very excited this week in the lead up to Christmas, with lots of different festive learning experiences.

We have used the smartboard to listen to and watch the nativity story and the children now have a good understanding of the meaning of Christmas.

Our boys and girls have been mixing and making their own gingerbread playdough, using their senses to describe how the playdough smells and feels. They selected buttons and sequins to make their gingerbread man clothes.

Some children explored the natural loose parts and created their own decorated Christmas stars and trees using the tinsel, coloured beads and baubles.

Our young learners have been mark making in a variety of ways and have particularly enjoyed using the cocoa powder.

Our building blocks have been a popular resource for imaginative play, with our young learners making sleighs, Christmas trees and stars.

There certainly has been LOTS of Christmas fun in Cathedral nursery this week!

Spanish is now the main language taught in Cathedral Primary School and across Our Lady’s High School cluster. One of our parents, Mrs Pech, is a native Spanish speaker and kindly visited each Primary 7 class on Friday 13th December to talk about the importance and benefits of the Spanish language. Our Primary 7 learners found out that Spanish is the second most commonly spoken language across the world (499 million speakers globally), making it really useful when visiting Spanish-speaking countries, including Mexico and Argentina, and of huge importance in the world of work, particularly careers in tourism and business. Mrs Pech’s presentation ended with a fun quiz and the opportunity to ask questions.

As part of our Come Clubbing @ Cathedral programme, Mrs Pech will be running a conversational Spanish club next term. Watch this space!

Many thanks to Mrs Pech for giving so generously of her time to support and enhance learning here at Cathedral.