ABSTRACT
Fruit and vegetables, with their appeal to the senses of smell, taste and touch as well as sight, always make stimulating contributions to the classroom. First-hand experience is always the best in education. I went to Sainsbury’s one evening before visiting this next school to buy a mango, a corn on the cob, courgettes and onions. I also collected some windfalls from our garden: bruised and freckled, most of them, as well as channelled by maggots. In front of the class, I played with the food, slicing, for example, an onion, while the class listened. I asked them what sounds they could hear, and one boy said, with serious intensity while others around him started to giggle, ‘At the start the sound is like someone going to the toilet’. I was impressed by the sheer determination of this speaker to get across what he had heard, in spite of what his friends (or his teachers, come to that) might say. Later, he wrote the line in his poem.
