(as Hamlet said, when Polonius asked what he was reading).
It was one of my last school visits before Corona closed our schools.
I was visiting three of my students who were teaching a Year Six group. They ran out of things to do about ten minutes before the end of the lesson, and one of them suggested that I might like to take over. I remembered an activity that I sometimes used when I was teaching in lower secondary school, and hoped it might work with these younger kids.
I put the letters PTSO on the board and asked the pupils how many words they could make, using all of the letters. They needed an example, so I gave them STOP. They caught on, and pretty soon we had POTS, POST, TOPS, SPOT and even OPTS on the board.
I was amazed when they almost unanimously demanded a new set of letters, so I wrote ATEM on the board. They were now in full swing and before you could say Jack Robinson (as the saying goes) we had team, tame, mate, meat and meta on the board.
We had a minute or two left, so I put NEMLO on the board and asked for two types of fruit.
There was an incredibly bright girl sitting at the back of the class next to the window, and quick as a flash (I really must stop using these cliches), she said: “melon and lemon”.
And that was the end of the lesson.