The poem below is by the american poet carl sandburg. he refers in the poem to five battlefields where many died (austerlitz, waterloo, gettysburg, ypres, and verdun).  grasspile the bodies high at austerlitz and waterloo.  shovel them under and let me work—  i am the grass; i cover all.  and pile them high at gettysburgand pile them high at ypres and verdun.  shovel them under and let me work.  two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:   what place is this?   where are we now?   i am the grass.  let me work. the poet implies that? a. time passes too slowly.  b. wars scar the land forever.  c. even bloody battlefields can be cleansed by time and nature.

quite an interesting way to teach topic sentences, because the answer to this question is the best definition of a topic sentence that one can present, it is as if answering the questions taught you how to do it, this is some real teaching, it is terribly well-done.

the topic sentence in this paragraph is:

topic sentences writers stay on track and keep a paragraph from becoming an aimless collection of sentences about an idea.

which incidentally tells you what a topic sentence should be.

- "a nonrestrictive clause functions as a modifier to a noun (that is an object, person or concept). these clauses can be described by the following three options: it is set off by comas, it contains a subject and a verbs and it adds nonessential information to the sentence.

for example, in "here is bill gates, who confounded microsoft software company" we can identify "who confounded microsoft software company" as a nonrestrictive clause modifying the noun bill gates. this clause can be describes as a nonrestrictive clause because it is separated by a comma, it adds nonessential information to identify who bill gates is and it must contain both a subject (who) and a verb (confounded)."