Sixty-four Primary 7 pupils received the Sacrament of Confirmation in Our Lady Good Aid Cathedral on Monday 28th November. The cathedral was packed with family and friends for the Mass, celebrated by Bishop Toal, and each and every child participated attentively and prayerfully throughout the liturgy. The children’s beautiful singing of the hymns made a special contribution to the prayerful atmosphere.
Many thanks to parents and families for accompanying the children on their on-going faith journey, to Miss Cameron, Mrs McLaughlan and Mrs Rimmer for preparing their classes for the sacrament, to Bishop Toal and Fr Lamb for celebrating the liturgy and for all those – from the school and from the parish – who worked so diligently behind the scenes to ensure everything ran smoothly on the night.
We continue to keep all those pupils who were confirmed in our prayers.
Over the past two weeks, the children have continued on their pirate journey. They have been listening to the story of ‘My Granny is a Pirate’ and ‘Pirate Treasure’. From these stories, they have been learning what it’s like to be a pirate and the jobs they do. They have used their imagination to create stories based on the day and life of a pirate. Outdoors, they have been scrubbing the decks, playing cannon ball target practice, walking the plank and have even been on a Pirate scavenger hunt.
Primary 5 pupils took to the stage on Friday 25th November for a fantastic Learning Showcase all about their class topic on Germany. There was barely an area of the curriculum left out of the children’s showcase, with geography, history, drama, music, dance, PE and technology all making an appearance in the vibrant presentation. There was even a countdown in German and a mention of pretzel making in class! The finale of the showcase featured Gabriel (Primary 5b) performing a convincing reenactment of the moment back on 31st December 1989 when David Hasselhoff sang “Looking for Freedom” to a crowd at the Berlin Wall.
Many congratulations to those Primary 6 pupils who were successful in their interviews to become Nursery Buddies. 
Mr Young did a double take this week when he walked past the newspaper stand at the back of the church. Much to his surprise, a Primary 7 Cathedral pupil was looking back at him from the front cover of the latest edition of The Scottish Catholic! As you may have read in a newsfeed posted a number of weeks ago, Cathedral Primary was chosen for this year’s Catholic Education Week photoshoot and it was one of these photos used on the cover of the magazine. 
Three more House Captains visited Our Lady’s High School on Wednesday 23rd November to continue work on our special Smart Schools
Council suggestions box. With the support of OLHS staff, the children made excellent progress and the box is now only one more session away from being finished.
Over half of the Cathedral pupils participating in the North Lanarkshire Active Schools Cross Country trials on Thursday 17th November qualified for the next event. Congratulations to all pupils who took part and many thanks to Mrs Tominey and Mrs Murphy (Nursery) for coaching our cross country team.
Primary 7 hosted a very successful coffee morning on Friday 18th November, raising a fantastic £938.32 for school funds. This money will go directly towards subsidising the Primary 7 residential trip to Lendrick Muir later in the year.
Recently, our twelve House Captains, who also serve as the Communications Team for our Smart School Council, came up with the proposal of having
a suggestions box to gather Cathedral pupils’ ideas for improving our school. Of course, here at Cathedral, we never settle for anything but the absolute best, so Mrs Duffy liaised with the Technical Department at Our Lady’s High School to arrange for our House Captains to visit the school over a three week period to build a wooden suggestions box.
As mentioned on the newsfeed several weeks ago, three of our House Captains visited Scotia Books recently to select and purchase new books for those pupils ready to begin Level 2 of our Accelerated Reader programme. With the shelves of our main library already full, a new Level 2 library has been created in the adjacent open area.