~Students will go to local cemeteries and gather data off of headstones.

~Church burial records will be obtained and additional data drawn from these.

~Students will organize the data. Students will plan a computer database to store data collected.

~Data will be entered into a computer database. A calculated field will be set up to provide life span information.

~Reports will be created. Students will transfer and consolidate data into a spreadsheet.

~Using formulas students will find the average life span overall, average life span per decade, longest life span, date of the first burial, etc.

~Students will design and create graphs. Students will decide on appropriate graph types and explain why each type was chosen.

~Students will research to find reasons for the variations in the graphs during different time periods and make conclusions based on research gathered.

~Students will develop a chapter to be included in the community’s history book.

~Evaluation. Students will write a reaction paper on the project. Students will be graded using a rubric for their project. They will also be graded on their paper.

~Using e-mail and e-mail attachments, data will be sent to and received from cooperating schools. Each student will use data from a different school if possible.

~Additional fields will be added to the existing database, and data from one cooperating school will be added, hopefully using copy and paste.

~A calculated field will be set up to calculated the new life spans.

~Both sets of life spans will be graphed on the same graph.

~Students will research reasons for differences in trends in the two sets of data.

~Students will write-up their findings in a comparison study.