Last year “WGOITGraph?” was monthly, but this school year, we’ll be publishing the feature weekly, most Wednesdays from September to April (calendar below). We hope you’ll join us.

Each week we’ll select an engaging Times graph and pair it with a simple set of questions — asking students what they notice, what they wonder, and what they think is going on in the graph. As students comment, we provide live moderation by statistics teachers (on Wednesdays). Then, at the end of the week, we post an end-of-activity “reveal” which shares the original article containing the graph, highlights from the moderation, related statistical concepts and helpful vocabulary.

Here’s the weekly schedule:

Thursday afternoons: We publish a new graph and update the previous week’s graph with the “reveal.” Wednesdays: Teachers provide live moderation of student comments from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Eastern Time.

The philosophy behind our approach is to let students begin analyzing graphs with the skills they will most naturally and successfully use — simple noticing and wondering. From there, students can simultaneously build confidence and acquire new conceptual understanding. Over time, as their critical thinking skills develop and their vocabulary grows, students’ analyses become more sophisticated.

Why do this weekly? Because we thought this new schedule would enable teachers to more easily incorporate “WGOITGraph?” into their classroom routines. Also The Times publishes scores of engaging graphs we wanted to take advantage of. And, perhaps most of all, because teachers told us how powerful this feature was in their curriculum, and how much students enjoyed it.

This summer we spoke to several STEM teachers who used “WGOITGraph?” in their classrooms. Here is what they told us:

1. “What’s Going On in This Graph?” fits easily into the curriculum.

Doug Tyson, a statistics teacher at Central York High School in York, Pa., said:

What I really appreciate about this feature is that it’s scalable; if you have 10 minutes in class, you can catch a few basic statistical ideas. … But sometimes I can actually use a particular graph throughout a whole lesson that I’m teaching, like scatterplots. In those cases, this feature can scale to a longer time and bigger statistical concepts.

When he decided to use our Hurricane Harvey precipitation graph-map, Gavin Smith, a biology teacher at the John D. O’Bryant School of Mathematics and Science in Boston, wasn’t sure what to expect from students:

I wondered myself what would happen with this graph; how long could I have my students work on this? In years past my students have struggled with putting together their thoughts and thinking critically. I tried it, we took the whole period, and it was amazing to see how thoughtful they were and the questions they came up with. It got students who don’t normally participate to participate and be excited about an activity.

2. It inspires rich discussion, which yields deeper understanding.