In April 2000, Mrs. Greene's classes went to the Mountview Cemetery in Billings, Montana. We gathered data from the headstones at the cemetery. The data gathered included First Name, Last Name, Year of Birth, Year of Death, Male or Female, and Other Interesting Information. (click here for pictures of the cemetery)

Back at school, we entered the data we had gathered into a database. We also figured out the approximate age of death, and entered that into our database. This took us several days, because it turned out that we had gathered information from over 2,800 headstones! (If you would like a copy of the database, email me at greenes@billings.k12.mt.us and I will send it to you as a ClarisWorks file.)

Now we got to the REALLY interesting part! Each of us chose a question that we wanted to answer using the data. We learned how to use the database to FIND answers as well as SORT the data. We were able to find out a lot of information from the database, and much of it was very surprising! (click here for questions and answers)

(click here for pictures of posters)

If you have more questions about this unit, please email me at greenes@billings.k12.mt.us. Thank you!