Cathedral Primary hosted visitors from St Andrew’s Primary, Falkirk, and St Mary’s Primary, Bo’ness, on Tuesday 19th November.
Four pupils, two teachers and the Head Teacher from St Andrew’s Primary, who we have been working in partnership with for over a year, carried out a learning walk of the school to evaluate how effectively we use our various learning spaces to support high-quality adult-led, adult-initiated and learner-led learning. Two of our Primary 7 pupils led the learning walk and there was some great bouncing around of ideas amongst the group. It has been an absolute pleasure working with St Andrew’s to help them get Active8 up and running in their own school and we wish them well on the next part of their journey.
Meanwhile, four teachers from St Mary’s Primary spent the morning in different Primary 4 – 6 classrooms finding out how Cathedral’s Active8 approach works. They then popped down to the Play Zone at the beginning of the afternoon to see Primary 1c engaged in their various activities (play, of course, lays the early foundations for Active8). All four teachers were extremely impressed with the engagement, enthusiasm and independence of Cathedral learners across the school and are looking forward to taking what they saw, heard and learned back to St Mary’s. We look forward to welcoming another two teachers from St Mary’s Primary to Cathedral on Monday 25th November.
Pupils, staff, families and parishioners celebrated Education Sunday at the vigil Mass in St Luke’s on Saturday 16th and the morning Mass in OLGA Cathedral on Sunday 17th November. Cathedral pupils led the bidding prayers and offertory and senior pupils from Our Lady’s High School the readings and Catholic Education Week address. Cathedral school choir also led the music at the Sunday morning Mass.
To round off their knights and castles topic, 
Primary 2 learners donned their crowns on Friday 15th November and travelled to the Great Hall for a glamourous medieval ball. The classes in Brainbox Boulevard gathered to wave to the princes and princesses on their way past. Our young royals enjoyed dancing and party games before sitting down to a banquet and then having their photos taken next to the golden carriage. What a grand end to a fantastic topic!
These two tech-savvy Primary 3 learners popped along to Mr Young’s office on Thursday 14th November to share some of their literacy work. The boys had programmed the Chatterpix app to make the mouth of the character on the front cover of their book move in time to a recording of them retelling the story in their own words. Impressive!
Our Play Zone was a hive of activity on Thursday 
14th November for the second day of Family Learning, this time for our Primary 2 classes. Once again, Mr Young began each individual class’s session with a presentation on Cathedral’s approach to play and then parents and carers had the opportunity to visit the Play Zone and learn alongside their child.
Schools across Scotland will mark Catholic Education Week during a two-week window, beginning on 16th November (the feast of St Margaret of Scotland) and ending on 30th November (St Andrew’s Day).
Family Learning session started with a presentation from Mr Young outlining the importance of play and how it is organised in Cathedral Primary School to facilitate adult-led, adult-initiated and child-led learning. Parents and carers then had the opportunity to visit the Play Zone to learn alongside their child.
‘Bookworm of the Week’ certificates were reintroduced to our weekly assemblies on Monday 11th November. Directly linked to ‘Accelerated Reader’, which is used to organise Cathedral’s school library, certificates are awarded to those Primary 4 – 7 learners who read the most words each week, based on books completed (including completing end-of-book comprehension quizzes).
This Primary 5 learner recently participated in the North Lanarkshire schools swimming time trials at the Tryst Sports Centre, Cumbernauld, competing in the girls’ 12 and under 50 metre breaststroke and freestyle.