Our Lady of Good Aid Cathedral Primary School

As part of our recent work with ‘Respect Me’, Scotland’s anti-bullying service, Cathedral Primary has developed ‘Bullying Drills’ and these were piloted in all classes on Thursday 16th and Friday 17th March. Regular fire drills ensure pupils and staff know exactly what to do in the event of a real fire. Likewise, the purpose of our new bullying drills is to remind pupils at the beginning of each term exactly what to do if they experience bullying behaviour or see someone else being bullied.

Pupils and staff had the opportunity to provide feedback on the presentation for their class. Once final changes have been made, bullying drills will take place in every class at the beginning of every term.

Pupils and staff brought a burst of colour and fun to Cathedral Primary on Friday 17th March with this year’s Crazy Hair Day. As you can see from the photographs – one from the nursery and one from each of our four learning streets – there were some absolutely amazing creations across the school!

Most importantly, of course, the day raised more money for our two Lenten charities, Missio and SCIAF.

Primary 5’s current topic is The Scottish Wars of Independence and, as part of their learning about the different battles,  the children researched and built replicas of Stirling Bridge.

Mr Young, Mrs Campbell and Mrs Duffy visited the three classrooms on Friday 17th March to see the models for themselves and were blown away by the children’s effort, skill and attention to detail. It came as no surprise, then, that there was so much positive feedback being written on the peer assessment sheets.

Well done, Primary 5!

Cathedral’s bespoke ‘Rose Trainer Achievement Award’ has a section for pupils to capture their wider achievements and these three children were reaching for their record cards on 17th March.

As you will have read in an earlier newsfeed, one of our Primary 6 girls recently participated in an international gymnastics competition in Lisbon, Portugal. She came an impressive 16th out of all participants from across the world , which is an absolutely phenomenal achievement!

Two other pupils, one from Primary 6 and the other from Primary 7, were recently awarded trophies from their football club, Villa Park: one for progressing to diving when saving goals and the other for scoring the first goal of the match.

Well done to all of you!

Mr Calum Croughan, one of North Lanarkshire’s Digital Pedagogy Practitioners, visited Primary 4b on Thursday 16th March to do a bit of team teaching with Mrs McCulloch. Mr Croughan was very impressed with the class’s engagement and digital skills, observing the children accessing and utilising the class One Drive through GLOW and using it to share their learning.

Mr Croughan will be back in Cathedral during the summer term to do more team teaching in Primary 4b. 

Our website newsfeed celebrated its first birthday on Thursday 16th March… and what an incredible year it’s been! Here are just a few of the highlights:

• March 2022  New library opened by Ross McKenzie; official launch of the ‘Rose Trainer Achievement Award’.
• April 2022  Local artist draws caricatures of Cathedral pupils to raise money for Ukraine.
• May 2022  Primary 7 pupils enjoy residential trip to Lendrick Muir.
• June 2022  Sun shines for two-day sports event. 
• August 2022  Pupils treated to theatre performance of ‘The Jungle Book’.
• September 2022  Ca-Fi Connections tours begin.
• October 2022  Special Mass in Cathedral as we say a sad farewell to Fr Chromy and Fr Mark.
• November 2022  Cathedral pupil makes it onto front cover of ‘Scottish Catholic’ magazine. 
• December 2022  Choir sings in city centre shop. 
• January 2023  Cathedral pupils complete Young Leaders training. 
• February 2023  Family Learning workshops receive an enthusiastic response from parents. 
• March 2023  Cathedral, Firpark and Clydeview team-up to support local food bank

Cathedral school community has so much to celebrate and be proud of over the past twelve months, so please do take the opportunity to enjoy a trip down memory lane by clicking on the link below:

https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/nl/olga/

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!