Our Lady of Good Aid Cathedral Primary School

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.

Cathedral’s four learning streets (Discovery Drive, Brainbox Boulevard, Winners Wynd and Ambition Avenue) are extensions of our classrooms. Pupils across the school were recently asked through Smart School Council how they would like to improve their learning street and their ideas have now been collated and written up on our Action Board:

• Cathedral pupils would like systems in place to ensure resources are quickly replenished when they run out;
• Cathedral pupils would like learning streets to be zoned to include a technology/construction area, a reading area, a Publication Station for independent writing and a ‘wellbeing area’;
• Cathedral pupils would like systems in place to keep learning streets tidy and organised, including brushes and dustpans to clear up after messy learning.

Mr Young would like to thank Cathedral learners from across the school for coming up with such great suggestions. These will now be taken forward and actioned by our twelve House Captains over the coming weeks.

Karen Jackson has been a much-loved member of our school community for fifteen years, so it was with much sadness that Cathedral waved a sad farewell to Karen on Friday 15th September. Karen will be particularly missed in the dining hall, where she was always waiting with a friendly smile for hungry Cathedral pupils… as well as a sneaky bottle of tomato ketchup on Fish Fridays!

There was a party atmosphere in the dining hall on Karen’s last day, including a dance routine to the Dolly Parton hit, ‘Working 9 to 5.’

Pupils, staff and parents wish Karen all the very best as she starts on an exciting new venture. Good luck!

Primary 7 hosted a very successful coffee morning  – the first of the year – on Friday 15th September, raising an incredible £756.80 for school funds. It was fantastic to see the hall bustling with so many parents, families and friends.

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

Cathedral Primary is committed to continuous improvement and, this year, is working in partnership with Glasgow University to research the impact of our approaches to learning and teaching. Kevin Lowden and Stuart Hall from the university’s ‘Robert Owen Centre for Educational Change’ spent the morning of 14th September in Primary 6b and Primary 7c seeing the school’s ‘Active8’ approach in action. Our visitors were extremely impressed with the children’s confidence and independence in planning and leading their own learning as well as their ability to work in different ways and talk about the skills they were using and developing.

The National Schools Singing Programme has been running in Motherwell Diocese for the past year. After a hugely successful start in four Glasgow schools in the west of the diocese, the project has now been extended to Cathedral, St Bernadette’s and St Brendan’s Primaries as well as Our Lady’s High School.

Mr James Greechin, NSSP Choral Director, was in Cathedral for the first of his weekly sessions with Primary 4 pupils on Thursday 14th September and the boys and girls thoroughly enjoyed the various songs and interactive music activities. Mr Greechin will also take a P4 – 7 choir each week which will have the opportunity to sing at various school, parish and diocesan liturgies.

Singing and music have always been important in Cathedral Primary, so we’re very excited about this aspect of school and parish life being strengthened through the National Schools Singing Programme. You can find out more about the programme on the NSSP website:

https://www.nssp.org.uk/

Read Write Inc. Phonics is now into its third year in Cathedral Primary and, as an integral part of our holistic approach to teaching infant literacy, has led to increased attainment in reading and writing. Even at this early stage of the year, our new Primary 1s have learned 13 sounds and are already starting to ‘Fred Talk’ (blending these sounds into simple words).

Laura Moonie, our Read Write Inc. link, spent Tuesday 12th September in Cathedral for our annual development day. Laura worked directly with children in a number of classes and also worked closely with Mrs McCoy to analyse data on the progress of our Primary 1 – 3 pupils. The data is looking exceptionally positive, with over 80% of pupils at or above their expected milestones.

Parents and carers of our new Primary 1 pupils will have the opportunity to attend a workshop on how we teach phonics, reading and writing on Thursday 21st September. This will include a ‘live lesson’ with some of our phenomenal learners.