Our Lady of Good Aid Cathedral Primary School

Primary 2 pupils visited Motherwell Heritage Centre on Tuesday 10th October to discover more about their home town. The children found out that Motherwell’s name originates from a well (the Lady Well) which was dedicated to Our Lady, patron of Cathedral Primary. Our young learners had the opportunity to compare old and new maps of the town and also made their own maps showing their journey to school. They also looked at old photographs of Motherwell and compared these with how it looks today.

As always, Heritage Centre staff were thoroughly impressed by our pupils’ manners, enthusiasm and hunger to learn new things.

Parents and carers play a vital role in helping their child maximise their potential and flourish in school. Taking the time to talk to their child on a regular basis about their learning is an important part of this.

Here at OLGA Cathedral Primary School, teachers use stampers and highlighter pens to give pupils high-quality feedback on their learning so that they know what their strengths are, as well as their next steps. ‘Milestone Moment’ stickers are also used to show key points in each child’s learning journey.

Cathedral Primary is introducing a new way for parents and carers to talk to their child about their recent learning and this will be launched at this coming Thursday’s Parents Evening. Please click on the link below to view a copy of the leaflet which will be waiting with your child’s jotters when you arrive at their classroom on Thursday.

Parent – pupil dialogue sheet

(Please bear in mind that some aspects of our new approach to marking and feedback may not have been fully introduced to some of our younger pupils this side of the October holidays).

There was a packed hall on Friday 6th October for the Primary 6 Learning Showcase. Drawing on their recent classroom work, the children delivered a captivating presentation on the Commonwealth, the role Tobacco Lords played in the development of Glasgow and, very importantly, the dark side of Glasgow’s wealth in times past due to the city’s involvement in the slave trade. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house when the children sang ‘Something inside so strong’, but it wasn’t long before the boys and girls had everyone smiling again when they encircled the entire audience and sang a vibrant rendition of ‘Children of the World’.

Well done to each and every P6 pupil and many thanks to Mrs McCarthy, Mrs McCue and Miss Degnan for inspiring and bringing out the absolute best in their young learners.

Our next Learning Showcase will be delivered by our Primary 3 pupils and takes place on Friday 17th November.

Our whole school community joined parents and parishioners in Our Lady of Good Aid Cathedral on Tuesday 3rd October for a special Mass to formally welcome our new Primary 1 pupils to the Cathedral family. The Mass opened with a rousing rendition of ’If I were a butterfly’, complete with actions. After the homily, Fr Lamb prayed a special blessing over the children and, once back in school, each child received a hand-made box containing a rosary and welcome message from our Primary 7 pupils.

Each and every Cathedral pupil participated in the Mass attentively and prayerfully and practically lifted the roof with their enthusiastic singing of the closing hymn, ‘This little light of mine’!

To mark International Coffee Day, Primary 5 pupils spent Friday 29th September extending and applying their recent learning with a Starbucks themed day. Learning activities included maths calculations using the Starbucks menu, tapping into their senses to write descriptive pieces about the sights, sounds and smells of a coffee shop and learning about the importance of Fairtrade coffee. The day concluded with teachers stepping into the role of baristas and helping the children prepare some delicious hot chocolate.

What fantastic inter-connected learning and a great way to round off the week!

As part of Priority 1 in this year’s Annual Improvement Plan, new ‘skills mats’ have been developed and introduced across all classes. Unique to Cathedral Primary, the mats have already enhanced the children’s ability to identify and articulate the skills they are using and developing during learning activities.

Why not ask your child each evening which skills they used and developed in school that day? You’re sure to be impressed by their language of learning!

During his daily classroom visits on Thursday 28th September, Mr Young discovered from a Primary 3 pupil that a Viking longship was an impressive 65 feet long! After showing the children a 30cm (1 foot) ruler, Mr Young set the children the challenge of calculating if a Viking longship could fit inside their learning street. Three pupils collaborated to work out how many rulers make up the length of Brainbox Boulevard and discovered that a longship COULD fit inside their learning street… but only just!

Primary 4 parents and carers gathered in the hall on Thursday 28th September to hear about Cathedral Primary’s ‘Active8’ approach. Active8 organises learning and teaching across each school day in a way which maximises pupil engagement, challenge and personalisation & choice. Active8 also frees-up more time for teachers to deliver high-quality direct teaching input to ability groups, as well as work with individual pupils. The presentation included an interview with two Primary 6 pupils about the difference between their learning before and after the introduction of Active8.

As you may have read in a recent newsfeed article, Glasgow University are supporting Cathedral Primary in researching the impact of Active8 on pupils’ learning. The approach has also gained interest from a number of other schools, and a group of staff from St Andrew’s Primary in Falkirk will be visiting Cathedral later this month to see it in action.

We wish all members of Cathedral school community a relaxing long weekend.

Please remember that Cathedral Primary and Nursery Class is not impacted by next week’s industrial action and will be open as usual on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

Our first parent workshop of the year, for Primary 1 parents and carers, took place on Thursday 21st September. The focus was 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 2 pupils. The children were absolute superstars and parents and carers were blown away by the model lesson.