Elementary Technology Lessons

2nd Grade Famous Americans Database

Second graders have been learning about famous Americans (SOL 2.11) so I created a database for them, just like I’ve been doing for the other grades. It’s really simple to create a database on mytaskhelper. Each student chose a famous American (Helen Keller, Jackie Robinson, George Washington, Susan B. Anthony, Abraham Lincoln, or Martin Luther King, Jr.) then they did some online research. I sent them to Wikipedia and to a website I created about all the famous Americans. Once they gathered their information and found a picture, they entered their data into an online form. After everyone was finished we visited the online database to take a look at all the records. I showed them how they could sort the data different ways (one of the important features of a database). We tried sorting them by last name, first name, gender, ethnic group, teacher’s name, and birthday. One cool thing about this database is that it automatically calculates how old the famous person would be if they were still alive today. The students enjoyed finding out that Washington would be 278 and Helen Keller would be 129! It gave them a new perspective about how long ago these people lived. If you’d like to download the folder of links to try this project with your class click here.