Our Lady of Good Aid Cathedral Primary School

Fifty-five Primary 3 pupils celebrated their First Reconciliation in Our Lady of Good Aid Cathedral on Tuesday 14th March. Fr Lamb and Fr Stephen were joined by Fr Keiran from St Brendan’s parish to hear the children’s confessions and a candle was lit for each pupil by their teacher as they stepped up into the sanctuary to celebrate the sacrament.

Despite a few initial nerves, the children did themselves, their parents and their teachers proud, and there was barely a dry eye in the church as they closed the liturgy with a beautiful and prayerful thanksgiving hymn, ‘When I think about the cross’.

We keep the children in our prayers as they continue on their journey of faith.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is an important agreement by countries who have promised to protect children’s rights. The Convention on the Rights of the Child explains who children are, all their rights, and the responsibilities of governments. All the rights are connected, they are all equally important and they cannot be taken away from children.

Please click on the link  below to download a handy leaflet on the UNCRC, which includes a summary of all 54 articles.

UN Convention on the Rights of the Child leaflet

Cathedral Primary has been embedding the UNCRC articles into the life and work of the school community for some time through ‘Growing Cathedral Citizens’. Posters highlighting different articles are displayed strategically around the school building and in classrooms, the articles are regularly referenced and explored at weekly assemblies and the articles are directly linked to the various activities in the school’s bespoke ‘Rose Trainer Achievement Award’.

Given that Cathedral Primary has already made significant progress embedding a child rights approach into all aspects of school life, we have decided to work towards formal accreditation through the UNICEF ‘Rights Respecting Schools’ award. As you will see in our Action Plan for ‘Silver’, we will very quickly achieve Bronze and are already well on our way to achieving Silver:

Cathedral PS Action-Plan-for-Silver

To achieve Silver (Rights Aware), Cathedral Primary will be assessed by a UNICEF Professional Adviser.

From next week, we’ll begin to link our newsfeed posts to the UNCRC articles. We look forward to sharing regular updates over the coming months on Cathedral’s journey towards Rights Respecting Schools.

Tuesday 14th March saw some unexpected snowfall in Motherwell and, despite it only being a small amount, Cathedral pupils still made the most of it. These creative children managed to gather enough snow to build a mini snowman, complete with hat and scarf!

Despite the fun in the snow, however, we’re all looking forward to the arrival of the warmer weather.

Book recommendations, from pupils and adults, have been a feature of our weekly assemblies for the past couple of months. Mr Young, Mrs Campbell, Mrs Duffy and Mrs McCoy were the first to do a book review and, from Monday 13th March, we started to branch out to other adults in our school and campus community.

Mrs McCarthy (Primary 6b) was the first class teacher to give a book recommendation. In fact, Mrs McCarthy is such an avid reader, she gave TWO book reviews: Katherine Rundell’s ‘The Explorer’ and ‘Rooftoppers’ by the same author.

Mrs O’Rourke in the office is already on the waiting list to do a book review and Mrs McGuire, one of the Principal Teachers from Firpark Primary, has even volunteered to share a favourite book. It won’t be too long before we’re inviting parents, carers and parishioners to pop along to assembly to help us promote reading for enjoyment here in Cathedral Primary!

The Ladies’ Night, which took place in St Bride’s Hall on Friday 10th March, raised an incredible £1158.80. As always, this money will directly benefit Cathedral pupils including subsidising next term’s trips and providing a high school tie to each of our Primary 7 leavers.

Many thanks to our incredible fundraising committee for organising and running the event and to all those who turned up to enjoy the evening.

As they do every year, the young learners of Cathedral and Firpark campus teamed up on Friday 10th March to support a local Motherwell foodbank. This year, we were also joined by our friends at Clydeview Primary, which opened on the campus in October.

Pupils co-ordinated the gathering of items donated by the three schools and Andrew Ewart from the Maranatha Foodbank was, once again, astounded by the generosity of Cathedral, Firpark and Clydeview families.

This practical act of kindness by our joint campus will make a huge difference to numerous local families, so many thanks to all those who gave so generously.

Our next round of Family Learning workshops got underway on Tuesday 7th March, focusing on Primary 1 – 3 Literacy.

Mr Young opened the workshop by talking about Cathedral Primary’s holistic approach to Literacy:

• a rigorous synthetic phonics programme to give children the tools they need to read and write
• the use of decodable reading books during phonics lessons to give children instant success and build their confidence
• exposure to non-decodable reading books to develop vocabulary and comprehension
• access to ‘real’ books through regular visits to the school library
• daily opportunities for the children to apply their phonics and reading in meaningful ways across the curriculum

The remainder of the workshop was led by Mrs McCoy who gave a presentation on ‘Read Write Inc. Phonics’, followed by a live phonics lesson with a group of Primary 1 pupils. The children were absolute superstars and parents and carers were blown away by the model lesson!

The session finished with parents working alongside their child on some literacy activities in their classroom.

“Amazing! The progress in such a short space of time is nothing short of phenomenal.” (P1 parent)

“My child talks about ‘special friends’ a lot… now I understand what he means!” (P1 parent)

“We think it’s a great way of learning. Our daughter has progressed amazingly well using Read Write Inc Phonics.” (P2 parent)

“Today’s workshop will assist parents with home learning.” (P2 parent)

One of our Primary 6 pupils will be heading off to Portugal on 8th March to represent the Scottish Gymnastics Club in an international competition. The event, which will last for six days, will see our young gymnast compete against participants from a number of countries including Ukraine, USA and Australia in tempo, balance and combined gymnastics.

We wish her well as she heads off to represent Scotland!

The latest ‘Spotlight this month’ to appear in our school library focuses on fiction which features animals amongst the characters. Many thanks, once again, to Mrs Mellon for creating such an eye-catching display.

Although we have a fantastic school library, we’re also very fortunate to be within walking distance of Motherwell library. Two Primary 7 pupils spent time on the phone to Motherwell library on Friday 2nd March organising class visits for the coming weeks and months. These visits will open up even more reading for enjoyment opportunities for Cathedral pupils, who already read for at least twenty minutes a day.

As part of our Ca-Fi Connections programme, Cathedral pupils from Primary 3a worked with pupils from Room 4 and Room 6 at Firpark Primary to design a garden for the Keep Scotland Beautiful Pocket Garden Design Competition. The children decided to celebrate medicine and our amazing NHS in their design and are absolutely thrilled that their garden has been selected as one of the winners.

The email from Keep Scotland Beautiful reads:

“Congratulations! I am delighted to let you know that your entry has been chosen as one of the winning designs for 2023!  Please pass on our warmest congratulations to your talented pupils.

We are looking forward to seeing your pupils’ design come to life.  A space has been allocated for your Pocket Garden in the online digital showcase that will be the national platform for people to see and be inspired by your work and creativity so it’s time to get growing!”

Well done to Cathedral and Firpark pupils and staff for their wonderful design. What an amazing Ca-Fi Connections team!