Our Lady of Good Aid Cathedral Primary School

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.

Pupils, parents, staff and parishioners celebrated Cathedral Primary School’s feast day on Friday 6th September with a Mass in honour of Our Lady’s Birthday. Primary 5 pupils had responsibility for the readings, prayers of the faithful and offertory and our sixty-strong choir led the hymns beautifully. Our new Pupil Chaplains from the IGNITE team also assisted with the celebration, including greeting people at the door.

Save the date: our Primary 1 Welcome Mass, which ALL Cathedral families and parishioners are most welcome to attend, will be celebrated in the Cathedral church on Thursday 26th September at 10.00am. We very much look forward to formally welcoming Primary 1 pupils and their families to the Cathedral family. Pupil Chaplains will be commissioned during the welcome mass and Cathedral teachers will renew their commitment to their vocation as Catholic educators in the presence of the school and parish community.

A Family Learning workshop for parents and carers whose first language is not English took place on Thursday 5th September. Mrs Leitch, our cluster EAL teacher, modelled some activities to support their child’s learning of English at home and provided parents and carers with a pack to take away with them.

Principal Teacher, Mrs McCoy, gave a brief reminder of Cathedral’s approach to teaching phonics, showed participants some videos from the Read Write Inc. Phonics virtual classroom, along with instructions on how to access these at home, and then provided parents and carers with a phonics information booklet in their own language. Booklets distributed this year included Romanian and Bulgarian, just two of the many languages spoken in Cathedral’s vibrant and diverse school community.

Following the first Smart School Council meetings of the year on Monday 26th August, House Captains conducted an inspection of learning streets to identify what was working well and make a note of areas for improvement. This information was shared with our amazing Support Assistants who quickly got to work to bring about the changes, including some wonderful finishing touches from Mrs Mellon.

The different zones of our learning streets are now better positioned, better organised and better resourced… all set to continue to facilitate enjoyable and challenging learning experiences for Cathedral pupils!

 I CAN LISTEN WHEN AN ADULT IS TALKING AND RESPOND TO INFORMATION AND INSTRUCTIONS. LIT 0-04a

 I AM LEARNING SKILLS AND STRATEGIES WHICH WILL SUPPORT ME. HWB 0-07A

This week, our young learners have been using and building on their existing skills, whilst learning new skills too.

In our STEM area, we have provided the provocation of plastic cups and our young learners have been balancing, stacking and constructing towers. This involved the children in problem solving and also developed their perseverance.

Our learners have been accessing our outdoor area, where stilts have been particularly popular. The boys and girls have worked together as a team to help each other balance and master walking along without support.

This month’s wellbeing indicator is SAFE and our learners have talked about and demonstrated how to stay safe both indoors and outdoors.

Congratulations to Primary 6 pupils who were successful in their interviews to become Nursery Buddies. Our enthusiastic and committed learners responded to Mrs Duffy’s job advert, completed an application form and went through the interview process.

The successful applicants graduated from Buddy Training School on Wednesday 4th September, signed their contract and will begin their Nursery Buddy shift rota in the coming days.

You can find out more about how Cathedral develops the workforce of the future by clicking on the link below:

https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/nl/olga/developing-the-young-workforce/