Our Lady of Good Aid Cathedral Primary School

Primary 7 hosted a very successful coffee morning  – the first of the year – on Friday 13th September, raising an incredible £773.40 for school funds. It was fantastic to see the hall bustling with so many parents, families and friends and this Primary 2 pupil was absolutely delighted with his raffle prize!

Many thanks to Primary 7 pupils, their teachers and the Fundraising Committee for co-ordinating the event.

On Thursday 12th September, Mr Young stumbled across Primary 7 in the early stages of learning a song for their upcoming learning showcase on Amazing Africa. Is it really any wonder Mr Young just LOVES coming to his work every morning??!!

 I KNOW THAT THERE ARE PEOPLE IN OUR LIVES WHO CARE FOR AND LOOK AFTER US. HWB 0-45a

 I LISTEN OR WATCH USEFUL INFORMATION AND USE IT TO MAKE CHOICES OR LEARN NEW THINGS. LIT 0-04a

UNCRC Article 3 The best interests of the child must be a top priority in all decisions and actions that affect children.

Our young learners have been learning and developing their understanding of rights and responsibilities and we selected two rights to focus on this week:

• Our right to be loved and respected and the responsibility to show love and respect to others.
• Our right to be heard and the responsibility to listen to other people.

The children have demonstrated their understanding of these rights by showing their friends love and care and by listening to each other when they have been playing.

Our Primary 6 buddies have started their regular visits and our young learners have taken great pride showing them around the different areas of our nursery. Our buddies have participated in group ring games, role-modelling positive interactions and turn-taking skills.

As our new-starts continue to settle into nursery life, we have been telling our ‘all about me’ stories. This has allowed the children to share things about themselves, get to know one another better and become aware of one another as individuals.

As mentioned in our website newsfeed over the past few days, Cathedral learners are currently focussing on different ways to improve and support pupil wellbeing, including having calming music and a ‘worry monster’ in our learning street wellbeing areas and placing a house plant on each classroom group table. However, Cathedral’s hard-working teachers and support staff have not been overlooked and Mrs Murphy has refreshed the Staff Wellbeing area in the staffroom. As autumn arrives, Cathedral staff can select some healthy fruit, dip into a magazine, curl up with a new book or simply be inspired by one of the quotations such as ‘I choose to start today with a smile!’ 😃

As reported in a newsfeed item posted earlier this week, several classes came up with the fantastic idea during Smart School Council of putting a house plant on each classroom group to improve the wellbeing of Cathedral learners. The first plants began to arrive on Wednesday 11th September, including two from this Primary 1 pupil. A warm Cathedral welcome to Tommy Tomato and Rosie Rosemary!

Cathedral moved swiftly on the action points generated from the Smart School Council class meetings which took place on Monday 9th September. These three Primary 7 learners visited Motherwell shopping precinct on Tuesday 10th September to select and buy items for our three learning street wellbeing areas (as well as grab a few sneaky arts and crafts items!). Purchases for wellbeing areas included ‘worry monsters’, mindfulness colouring books and fidget toys.

During their recent learning walk, House Captains noticed that the wellbeing areas Cathedral pupils requested last year are not being used particularly well and agreed that the next Smart School Council theme should be Our Health & Wellbeing. At their Smart School Council class meetings on Monday 9th September, pupils across the school were asked the question: ‘What can we change about or add to our learning street wellbeing areas to better support our wellbeing?’.

House Captains met on Tuesday 10th September to discuss the results and update our action board which helps Cathedral continually drive forward change and improvement for all of our learners. Based on the feedback from our twenty class meetings, House Captains agreed to take forward three action points:

• Resource wellbeing areas with pupils’ suggestions such as fidget toys, mindfulness colouring books and a ‘worry monster’;
• Put out a message on the school app requesting donations of house plants to place on each classroom group around the school;
• Display ‘Emotions Works’ materials in each wellbeing area.

Watch this space for news of how we turn action points into reality!

Primary 1 and 2 were the first year groups to enjoy a rugby taster session with Coach Grant Talbert from Dalziel Rugby Club on Monday 9th September. The boys and girls learned some basic rugby skills including the importance of always passing the ball backwards to your teammates rather than forwards (easier said than done!).

Primary 5 learners will have a similar taster session on Thursday 12th September and Grant will also be running an after school club for Primary 3.

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.

These two Primary 7 learners talked about some of their recent maths work on Monday 9th September. They have been learning to round numbers to one, two and three decimal places and both talked confidently about all the learning that led up to their ‘Milestone Moment’.

What a surprise Miss Jackson’s Primary 2 class got when they arrived at school on Friday 6th September to find their classroom transformed into an incredible medieval castle, complete with drawbridge! It’s a truly inspiring space for our young learners to enjoy delving into this term’s Knights & Castles topic.