Getting Started
A quick orientation for teachers new to Data Adventures.
What Data Adventures is
Data Adventures is a middle school curriculum that teaches data literacy through making. Instead of starting with spreadsheets, students start with what they care about — their names, their preferences, the games they play — and learn to see the data already inside.
The curriculum is organized into three Adventures of four to five lessons each — Avatar Maker (4), Festival Maker (5), and Game Maker (4). Adventures can be taught in any order, but most teachers start with Avatar Maker since it introduces the Dataverse story.
Before the first lesson
- Choose your Adventure. If this is your first time teaching Data Adventures, start with Avatar Maker.
- Read the Adventure overview. Each Adventure has a unit page summarizing the arc across its lessons.
- Open Lesson 1 and review the prep checklist. Most lessons want about 20 minutes of teacher prep the night before.
- Print your materials. Each lesson lists what to print and how many copies.
- Gather any physical supplies — stencils, stickers, googly eyes, etc. The materials list distinguishes between consumables and one-time prep.
What’s on each lesson page
Every lesson page is laid out the same way so you can find what you need in the same place every time:
- Overview — what the lesson is about and where it fits.
- Student Objectives — the “I can…” statements for the lesson.
- At a Glance — section-by-section pacing for the class period.
- Materials & Prep — what to print, gather, and set up digitally, plus what to do before you teach.
- Slides & Teaching Guide — the lesson deck with slide-by-slide speaker notes.
How to navigate
Each Adventure’s overview page shows its lessons as a visual grid, and every lesson page has previous/next links so you can move through the arc in order. The Teacher Hub home links to all three Adventures.