We report on the development of a middle school life sciences inquiry module, Sensing the Environment. This "data-enriched" inquiry module includes a series of activities exploring the nature of science, photosynthesis, transpiration, and natural selection, which culminates in students' querying authentic environmental data to support a scientific argument. This inquiry module results from a framework we devised to promote use of authentic data in the classroom. Our framework includes three elements: (a) an online tool, enabling authentic data to be easily searched, visualised, stored, and used to substantiate a scientific argument; (b) an online instructional teacher guide, providing support for teaching through inquiry; and (c) a dynamic data gathering/delivery system, allowing for expansion of the data and enabling students, teachers, scientists, or the public to "add value" to the data. Based on our experience with "Sensing the Environment", we suggest our framework can be a means for facilitating integration of rich, dynamic, and authentic data into science instruction. (Contains 2 figures.)