Topic Sentences & Elaboration

Once you’ve created a solid thesis statement you already have the backbone of your essay complete. A bit of planning will create topic sentences to provide you with a skeleton. Brain storming what you want to say about each point will provide the meat for your skeleton, but it’s not until you elaborate on each point through the writing process that your essay has some real muscles to flex. Let’s run through an example for how to write a full body paragraph with significant elaboration. For this example our thesis will be: All students should be provided with free lunch at school because the reduction of distractions and embarrassment it pays for is worth the heavy cost to tax payers. This thesis tells us that the writer is in favor of a free lunch for all students. The writer’s first body paragraph will explain why a reduction of distractions will come with providing free lunch for all students. The second body paragraph will explain how free lunch for all students will alleviate embarrassment. The third body paragraph with be a counterargument addressing the counterclaim of how much such an initiative would cost tax payers. Let’s write the first body paragraph. We’ll need a transition, reinforcement of the claim, and repetition or restatement of the first thesis point to create our topic sentence: A key reason all students should eat lunch for free is to reduce the distractions in school. We should now explain what distractions exist in school and how providing all students with free lunch is going to reduce them. In our brainstorming we may have come up with some quick bullet points that look like this +Pay lines take longer -Rushing to eat can cause distractions +Complaints distract from learning +Hungry students can’t focus +Social division Pick the strongest points from your brainstorming and logically present them. Imbed specific examples when appropriate, preferably from your experiences, observations, and readings. Employ rhetorical devices when appropriate. Then close your paragraph. Public school exists for all students to learn. Schools provide a lunch break because nourishment is an essential for learning. Students whose families can’t afford lunch and haven’t done paperwork to provide it for free are distracted by hunger all day. Waiting in long lines, rushing to eat, or getting back to class late also distracts students from instruction. Lunch lines that don’t have to wait for cashiers to take numbers, swipe cards or take money can get every single student fed headed back to class quickly. America cannot afford to pad its wallets any longer for the sake of stomach and mind. Depending on the prompt you have to work with, you may have more clear and specific examples at your disposal than others. Using appropriate vocabulary, clear examples, rhetorical devices, and staying on topic will lead to meaningful thorough elaboration for each body paragraph.