Over the past two weeks, the children have been listening and recalling the story of the ‘Rainbow Fish’, a fishy tale about how sharing can make
you happy. They have expanded their learning by retelling the story and creating their own stories about sharing and feelings. Some of these have been recorded in the talking photo album by the children themselves, which allow the children to revisit and record their stories over and over again. Discussions about going to the seaside to find the Rainbow Fish led to the children thinking what they would find at the beach. A beach was created with a range of items hidden in the sand and the children used the tongs to clean up the beach improving their fine motor skills as they did so. The colourful patterns in the story have led the children to design, create and follow their own patterns using a range of loose parts. Outdoors, the children have used the pattern wheels to discuss and form their own designs.Wednesday was the second week of the Forest Kindergarten Block, with the children exploring the natural world around them. The children are full of happy stories about their forest adventures. Wednesday’s favourite activity was watching the birds fly back and forward gathering sticks to make nests. The children decided that they would do the same using a range of natural materials.
Primary 3 took their families on a whistle-stop tour of climate zones at their learning showcase on Friday 24th March. The children delivered fascinating information on each climate zone with incredible energy, enthusiasm and humour and had their audience singing and clapping along from beginning to end. The showcase ended with a humorous reminder that we live in a temperate climate zone which, although avoids us having to experience extremes in our weather, does mean we need to put up with (yes, you guessed it!) lots of RAIN!
Classes across the school had the opportunity to try out judo on 21st and 22nd March. Judo builds fitness levels and increases coordination, flexibility and agility. The children had great fun and hopefully some of them will decide to take up judo as a long-term sport.
As parents and carers will have read in previous newsfeeds, Cathedral Primary is currently working with ‘Respect Me’, Scotland’s anti-bullying service, to review and refresh the school’s approaches to preventing, reducing and responding to bullying behaviour.
In advance of developing this year’s Tackling Poverty Strategy, North Lanarkshire’s Tackling Poverty Team wants to ensure children and young people have a voice and the opportunity to help the council shape its services. A group of Primary 6 and 7 pupils worked with the Tackling Poverty Team on Monday 20th March to explore how the cost of living is affecting them and other families and suggest what the council could do to help. The team were very impressed with the children’s insight and ideas.
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 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!
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.
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.
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. 