Our Lady of Good Aid Cathedral Primary School

Priority 2 in Cathedral’s 2024/25 improvement plan is: Improve the quality and increase the impact of Religious Education RC across all stages through a systematic and active review of the ten characteristics in the Charter for Catholic Schools.

Cathedral was delighted to welcome Barbara Coupar, Director of the Scottish Catholic Education Service, to our staff meeting on Thursday 21st November. Barbara gave teaching staff the opportunity to revisit Scotland’s RERC syllabus, ‘This is our Faith’, and begin to explore together how its content can be translated into high-quality learning experiences for pupils.

Many thanks to Barbara for taking time out of her busy schedule to support Cathedral in taking forward this aspect of our improvement plan.

This Primary 7 learner has campaigned tirelessly over the past year for  a cause very close to her heart and her incredible efforts and contribution to the success of the campaign were recently recognised and reported on BBC Newsround. Everyone here at Cathedral was blown away by her confidence and exceptionally professional presentation skills… definitely a journalist or television presenter in the making!

Despite only taking up Irish dancing two years ago, this Primary 3 pupil is already making her mark in the world of Irish dancing. She has had a string of sensational performances, racking up a number of trophies and titles. She even went viral on TikTok a couple of weeks ago dancing next to a busker in Dublin! It’s no wonder, then, that she recently made the front page of the local press. Everyone at Cathedral is so proud of you!

Our Lady of Good Aid Cathedral was packed with family and friends as Primary 7 pupils received the Sacrament of Confirmation on Wednesday 20th November. Each and every pupil participated attentively and prayerfully throughout the liturgy and the beautiful music, led my Mr Greechin and Cathedral school choir, added to the prayerful atmosphere.

Many thanks to Bishop Toal and Fr Lamb for celebrating the liturgy, to parents and families for accompanying the children on their on-going faith journey, to Miss Cameron, Mrs Shevlin and Mrs Allison for preparing their classes for the sacrament, and for all those – from the school and from the parish – who worked so diligently behind the scenes to ensure everything ran smoothly on the night.

We continue to keep all those pupils who received the Sacrament of Confirmation in our prayers.

Primary 7a learners were very excited to receive video messages from their penpals in South Korea on Wednesday 20th November. The initial connection was established when Miss Cameron visited a teacher friend in South Korea during the summer holidays.

This Cathedral pupil was thrilled to hear from his penpal, finding out that his birthday is on 14th June, that he enjoys soccer and that one of his favourite foods is apple. The questions his Korean friend wanted to ask included, ‘How do you say hello in Polish?’ and ‘What is your favourite football team?’.

How amazing to have friends at the other side of the world!

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.

Across our schools and parishes, we celebrate and give thanks for the precious gift of Catholic Education which seeks to develop and nurture the whole person, build a community between home, school and parish and continue the Church’s mission of calling young people to discover and enter into a living relationship with Jesus Christ.

The four schools which make up Our Lady’s Cluster have put together an electronic newsletter for Catholic Education Week, which can be accessed via the link below.

https://sway.cloud.microsoft/2XK5G0isKPTwwL5G

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.

Feedback from Primary 1 and 2 parents and carers over the two days was exceptionally positive:

“An excellent way for children to develop skills and lead their learning.”

“It was great to watch Lucas design his teapot and describe to me what he was learning.”

“It was lovely to see the children interacting together in such a controlled but fun way.”

“Harper loves coming out to the play area. She has really enjoyed showing me her writing today.”

“I loved seeing how engaged they all were.”