Teacher Instructions & Lesson Resources:
Pre-step (before sharing the published model): Oxymorons are fun, and should be inroduced to your students before writing to this prompt. An oxymoron is created when two words that seem to be opposites sit next to each other. WritingFix has a great prompt that has students create interesting oxymorons with words. Click here to see it.
Good oxymorons can inspire great writing, but can oxymorons be created with things other than words? Can tastes be labeled oxymorons?
Explain to your students that taste is a powerful sense. As children and as adults, we often are suddenly struck by the need to taste things. We crave tastes. Our mouths may water, if we really want to taste something that we crave.
Sometimes, though, we are unexplainedly intrigued by the idea of tasting something that might not taste so good. This writing prompt is based on this idea.
From Corbett: "In Cannery Row, Doc is a charming character, who reminds me of my own father. One endearing thing that he does in chapter 17 is he orders a beer milkshake. He just gets this notion that a beer milkshake would taste interesting."
Assure your students that you know they have never tasted beer because they are too young. Explain to them that a beer has a sour taste to it, because it's made of fermented materials. Ice cream is sweet because it is made with sugar. To combine sour and sweet (two opposities) is a unique way to think about creating an oxymoron.
Step one (sharing the published model): Explain to your students that you'll be sharing with them a funny idea from John Steinbeck's Cannery Row. The character, Doc, is just intrigued by the idea of what a beer milkshake would taste like. The idea has intrigued him for some time.
In chapter 17, he finally orders one at a diner. Although Steinbeck doesn't show us that Doc probably thinks it tastes terrible, we can pretty much bet that it does.
For today's writing assignment, students will actually show us what a tasted oxymoron does to a person who is consuming it.
Share with them chapter 17, which is a short chapter, highlighting the beginning and end parts which talk about the beer milkshake. Be sure to point out Steinbeck's style of using details and descriptions, and be sure to point out his amazing sentence fluency skills.
Next, share with them this teacher-model of writing (written by Corbett Harrison, but you can claim it as your own, if you'd like) that explores Doc's reactions to the taste of the oxymoron introduced by Steinbeck. The description comes in three parts, which is what students will ultimately create. Ask your students to see if they can figure out what the model's three parts are. [Answer: 1) the look of the food, 2) the first taste and the second taste, 3) the decision not finish consuming the food.]
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Step three (thinking and pre-writing): 