The students in Room 111 welcome you to their website.

We hope to teach you about some of our favorite heroes. Martin Luther King Jr., Theodore Roosevelt, Jackie Robinson, and more have been the focus of our biography projects.

Our project began with lots of reading. Each one of us read at least one book (some of us read two or more books!) about our hero. What we learned was that each person we studied somehow made a difference in our world. Many of our heroes fought for justice and equality. They used their words and actions to create some kind of change. Our heroes were courageous, creative, and inspiring. They were true heroes. We would like to share some of what we have learned about these amazing people. We hope they become heroes for you as well. Enjoy our website!

Update (6/18/08): Today marks the first anniversary of My Hero. Our second graders are just finishing up their third grade at Jackson Street School. By the grace of the Google Gods, this site has been visited by over 100,000 visitors since its launch.

Traffic was slow for the first several months, but I noticed growth started to pick up in October 2007, and increased consistently each month until we peaked in January 2008 with 20,079 visitors coming to our site. Which of our heroes was attracting most of our traffic? Martin Luther King, Jr., Derek Jeter, Gandhi, and Queen Elizabeth I are our most popular pages.

With so much interest in our heroes, we decided to post our recommendations for further reading. We have also added a donation button to help us keep up with domain and hosting fees so we can keep the site online for another year. If you like this site, please consider "buying a cup of coffee" for the webmaster.

This site is best viewed with the Firefox browser. See other site notes.

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The creation of this website began with our study of biographical writing. The second grade students started their study of this genre by reading a variety of biographies. Next, they needed to individually choose a person that caught their interest. After each student picked someone they were interested in, they began reading – again. Some students read more than one book about their person. Others read more. What emerged through the process was a genuine excitement and curiosity. Soon their person of interest became their hero!

Once they were done with their reading, it was time to take notes. The students needed to find the facts from the books and record them. For many kids, this was the first time they had ever taken notes. Finally, the kids began to write. They wrote a lot! First, the students needed to write their “sloppy copy” and self edit. Next, Ms. Welchman typed the reports with the corrections that the students thought they needed. The reports, however, were still not done. The kids needed to edit some more! So they asked a friend to help them correct the newly typed report. They corrected spelling, punctuation, and so on. They gave one another great ideas that helped improve their writing! Finally, each student met with Ms. Welchman in a writing conference. The students enjoyed working directly on the computer with Ms. Welchman and many thought it was fun! Soon the students’ final copies were done and ready for the website!

Finally, one of our wonderful parents created the site you are about to explore. Cathy came in often. She asked lots of questions, showed us many options, and guided the whole process of creating the website. Thank you Cathy for your efforts. We know putting this together was a lot of hard work for you but we truly enjoyed working with you.

For more information about this website, please see the Webmaster's note.

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We chose to create a blog because we want our visitors to interact with the website. Please sign our guest book, leave comments about our reports, take our surveys, and send a WebCard to your friends and invite them to visit, too.

Comments on this website are moderated, and guest book entries are monitored to ensure this site remains safe and friendly to all. If you have any questions, concerns or comments about the content on this site, you can leave them here as a comment or contact the webmaster directly. Students can request the webmaster to make changes to their reports, too.

This site was created on the Blogger platform, and utilizes widgets from third-party sites. If you are accessing My Hero from a network that filters content (e.g. a school!), you may not be able to see or use several features on the site, including:

• Commenting
• Surveys
• Ratings
• Class Pets

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