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Data literacy is an integral part of overall literacy in the twenty-first century. After participating in a National Science Foundation–funded BIORETS (Research Experiences for Teachers Sites in Biological Sciences) program that emphasized the importance of data literacy, I was motivated to focus more intentionally on data literacy in my middle school classroom. Providing students with strategies for making sense of data is an important component of data literacy. In an effort to develop this data literacy skill, I introduced Slow Reveal Graphs, a teaching strategy that promotes sensemaking about data. By removing contextual information from data visualizations presented in textbooks and the media and asking students to interpret the information as it is provided, students engage in problem solving, gain confidence, and grow their computational thinking skills. As a result, students engage more deeply with the content of graphs and other visual representations of data. 

Building opportunities for students to interact with data in creative and novel ways builds curiosity, engagement, and data literacy skills. During participation in an NSF Research Experience for Teachers program, we focused on building our skills with data collection, analysis, and visualization. Dear Data was a key text used to help us explore data in a different way. In this article we provide three ways to implement Dear Data concepts in the middle school classroom, each with a different time commitment. We have found these activities engage students deeply, and the creativity of their work reflects this engagement.