Our Lady of Good Aid Cathedral Primary School

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.

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.