Our Lady of Good Aid Cathedral Primary School

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!

The Ladies’ Night, which took place in St Bride’s Hall on Friday 10th March, raised an incredible £1158.80. As always, this money will directly benefit Cathedral pupils including subsidising next term’s trips and providing a high school tie to each of our Primary 7 leavers.

Many thanks to our incredible fundraising committee for organising and running the event and to all those who turned up to enjoy the evening.

As they do every year, the young learners of Cathedral and Firpark campus teamed up on Friday 10th March to support a local Motherwell foodbank. This year, we were also joined by our friends at Clydeview Primary, which opened on the campus in October.

Pupils co-ordinated the gathering of items donated by the three schools and Andrew Ewart from the Maranatha Foodbank was, once again, astounded by the generosity of Cathedral, Firpark and Clydeview families.

This practical act of kindness by our joint campus will make a huge difference to numerous local families, so many thanks to all those who gave so generously.

Our next round of Family Learning workshops got underway on Tuesday 7th March, focusing 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 1 pupils. The children were absolute superstars and parents and carers were blown away by the model lesson!

The session finished with parents working alongside their child on some literacy activities in their classroom.

“Amazing! The progress in such a short space of time is nothing short of phenomenal.” (P1 parent)

“My child talks about ‘special friends’ a lot… now I understand what he means!” (P1 parent)

“We think it’s a great way of learning. Our daughter has progressed amazingly well using Read Write Inc Phonics.” (P2 parent)

“Today’s workshop will assist parents with home learning.” (P2 parent)

One of our Primary 6 pupils will be heading off to Portugal on 8th March to represent the Scottish Gymnastics Club in an international competition. The event, which will last for six days, will see our young gymnast compete against participants from a number of countries including Ukraine, USA and Australia in tempo, balance and combined gymnastics.

We wish her well as she heads off to represent Scotland!

The latest ‘Spotlight this month’ to appear in our school library focuses on fiction which features animals amongst the characters. Many thanks, once again, to Mrs Mellon for creating such an eye-catching display.

Although we have a fantastic school library, we’re also very fortunate to be within walking distance of Motherwell library. Two Primary 7 pupils spent time on the phone to Motherwell library on Friday 2nd March organising class visits for the coming weeks and months. These visits will open up even more reading for enjoyment opportunities for Cathedral pupils, who already read for at least twenty minutes a day.

As part of our Ca-Fi Connections programme, Cathedral pupils from Primary 3a worked with pupils from Room 4 and Room 6 at Firpark Primary to design a garden for the Keep Scotland Beautiful Pocket Garden Design Competition. The children decided to celebrate medicine and our amazing NHS in their design and are absolutely thrilled that their garden has been selected as one of the winners.

The email from Keep Scotland Beautiful reads:

“Congratulations! I am delighted to let you know that your entry has been chosen as one of the winning designs for 2023!  Please pass on our warmest congratulations to your talented pupils.

We are looking forward to seeing your pupils’ design come to life.  A space has been allocated for your Pocket Garden in the online digital showcase that will be the national platform for people to see and be inspired by your work and creativity so it’s time to get growing!”

Well done to Cathedral and Firpark pupils and staff for their wonderful design. What an amazing Ca-Fi Connections team!

Thirteen Cathedral pupils participated in the North Lanarkshire cross country finals at Wishaw Sports Centre on Thursday 2nd March. By the end of the event, Cathedral had come out on top with 1st in the Primary 7 boys category, 1st in the Primary 6 boys category and 2nd in the Primary 7 girls category. What an incredible result!

Many thanks to Mrs Tominey for coaching our cross country club and accompanying the children to the event, and well done to all of the participants, particularly our phenomenal medal winners!

World Book Day took place on Thursday 2nd March and a variety of book-related activities took place in classes throughout the school. As part of the day’s events, Mr Young read a short story called ‘The Princess in the Tower Block’ to the whole school over the tannoy.

The humourous story was a huge hit with the children, particularly when the giant shouted, “FEE FI FO FUM, I’M COMING DOWN TO BITE YOUR BUM!”

“I thought it was really funny. It made me laugh.”   Harry (P1)

“My whole class was laughing at the story, especially when the princess said she’d flush the frog down the loo.”   Lara (P3)

“I really liked the jokes all the way through. The way Mr Young read the story helped me picture everything in my head.”   Lucy (P5)

“I liked how so many different fairy-tales appeared in the story. The part when the seven dwarfs sent their bag of dirty washing to the princess really made me laugh!”   Miley (P7)

Cathedral Primary is currently working with ‘Respect Me’, Scotland’s anti-bullying service, to review and refresh the curriculum, procedures and systems the school has in place to prevent, respond to and reduce bullying behaviour. As part of this development work, two Cathedral House Captains led the teachers’ staff meeting on Monday 27th February.

Following a short introduction from Miss Degnan, who is coordinating the work with ‘Respect Me’, the two House Captains gave a presentation on the school’s current approaches to dealing with bullying behaviour, which included a personal account from one of the children. Teaching staff then had the opportunity to work in their stage groups to read through and give feedback on a draft anti-bullying policy.

An anti-bullying poster competition was launched at assembly on the same day and we look forward to receiving entries from across the school. Winners will be selected from Primary 1, Primary 2 – 4 and Primary 5 – 7.

Very well done to the two House Captains for leading the staff meeting so confidently and articulately!