ShmoopTube

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[Coop and Dino singing]

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Look at the cover of any celebrity gossip magazine – y'know, the ones your Aunt Mildred [Woman holding People magazine]

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is totally obsessed with – and you'll no doubt see something about

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so-and-so celebrity's beach body.

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Getting your beach bod ready for summer isn't easy – especially after a holiday season

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of turkey dinners and pumpkin pies. [Man clutching stomach and collapses]

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Thankfully, today we're going to be talking about getting a different sort of body in

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shape – your biographical body paragraph.

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First, we need to choose a main idea from the introduction paragraph.

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Hopefully, our first paragraph outlined our main points, so now all we have to do is pick [Main points highlighted in paragraph body]

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one and make that the topic sentence for this body paragraph.

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If our first paragraph didn’t outline our main points…then it’s going to be back

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to the drawing board.

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Uh…no. That’s the wall. Our mother is going to be furious. [Boy drawing on the wall and mother appears angry]

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Once we’ve nailed down our topic sentence, all that's left to do is expand our paragraph

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using interesting and relevant information that we learned from our research.

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And how do we know if information is relevant? Because we have our topic sentence!

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If it relates to the topic sentence, it's likely a good match for our paragraph.

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So…if our topic sentence has to do with the vanishing rain forests, and we came across [Rain falling in rainforest]

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a source that supports the claim that flossing is important…

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…uh, probably not relevant.

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If, on the other hand, our research turns up something rain forest related…we’re totally good.

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A great way to get a sense of how a good body paragraph should look [Boy walking in library]

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is by checking out some examples.

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Find a body paragraph from a biography of your choosing

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and analyze it so see what makes it so great. [Boy checks out book in library]

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Take this one, about Albert Einstein.

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The topic sentence in this paragraph tells us that Albert shared his research.

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That's the focus of the paragraph.

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From there, it goes on to give supporting evidence describing the response to his letters [Supporting evidence highlighted in paragraph]

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from scholarly journals and colleagues.

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The last sentence concludes the paragraph by discussing how this allowed him to spend

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his days doing what he loved. Playing field hockey.

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Uh…wait. No…all that imagining and thinking stuff. Yeah. [Einstein playing field hockey]

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Anyway, everything in this paragraph works well together, which is what makes it so strong.

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The topic sentence introduces the idea, the supporting details develop it, and the conclusion

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summarizes the paragraph nicely, too.

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The next time you write a biographical body paragraph, go through it just like we did

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here, and ask yourself if the topic sentence, supporting sentence and concluding sentences [Coop discussing a biographical body paragraph]

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all do the jobs they're supposed to do.

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If the answer is yes, you've likely written a stellar body paragraph.

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But hopefully you’ve written that stellar paragraph on some type of computer, or paper.

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You’re starting to run out of wall space…[Girl walks into room of writing on the wall]

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