Jackie Patnell is a teacher at the small school of Sandringham and West Newton Church of England Primary Academy, which has under a hundred pupils on its roll. But that hasn’t stopped her YouTube videos on maths and phonics from attracting almost a thousand subscribers.
Now a mother and son in Wiltshire have emailed the school express their appreciation:
“Just wanted to express my sincere thanks to Mrs Patnell on YouTube for her fantastic lessons. While we do not attend your school and live in Wiltshire, my son is of Reception age and we stumbled across a Maths lesson last week and since then have been watching daily.
“The lessons are absolutely fantastic in terms of interest and timing, and we have now recommended this onto friends too!
“One day we would love to say thank you, and once this pandemic is over, we will get a card sent to the school for her. Thank you again.” Gemma & Albie.
“I knew my Reception class wouldn’t reach their full potential if I simply gave them worksheets for maths and phonics”, responded Jackie Patnell. “Four and five-year-olds would benefit more from seeing their usual teacher teaching in a similar way to what they were used to in the classroom. I had to adapt the lessons quite a bit in order to make them entertaining but still educational. This proved trickier in some more than others, especially during a lesson on time, when I had to time my chicken racing round my back garden (this took several takes – never work with chickens)!
“I received thank you messages from people in several different continents and this was when I felt really proud and extremely happy to be helping out so many people that were suffering from the same struggles all around the world. I am about to hit 1000 subscribers to my channel and considering that I was hoping to just attract my nine pupils, this now feels like a real success and a great way to have worked during lockdown.”
Executive headteacher Jane Gardener said, “I have been so impressed with how all the staff have adjusted to managing learning remotely. Our wonderful team has supported our children and families and we have received such positive feedback at this challenging time. Jackie’s creativity producing line lessons for her Reception class in phonics and maths has been a tremendous success, with wonderful feedback from not only our own families but from those far and wide.”
Mrs Patnell’s channel can be viewed here.
Sandringham & West Newton Primary Academy is a member of the Diocese of Norwich Education and Academies Trust.