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Adventures in Junior High and Mathematics

absolute value

10 Activities that Make Learning Absolute Value A Snap

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In 7th grade we teach students about mean absolute deviation. When we first started teaching, it we kind of glossed over absolute value because it seemed so easy. What I found was my students in math lab simply did not get it, and they needed specific lessons and practice about absolute value before tackling mean absolute deviation. I know it seems simple and they should just get it and remember it, but it just doesn’t work out that way.

So, whether you’re reviewing absolute value before another topic, or introducing it for the first time to your 6th grade students, here are 10 absolute value activities that will help student understand and remember absolute value.

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Teaching Absolute Value Through Discovery

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In recent years, mean absolute deviation and variability concepts have been added to 7th grade math. It seems like a huge jump from their current understanding to these concepts, but we as teachers always figure out ways to make the content accessible to students. The first time I taught mean absolute deviation I just told the kids that absolute value was the distance a number is from zero. It seems like a simple concept and in my rush to get to the meat of the topic, I left it at that. Well, needless to say, the majority of my students don’t retain information just because I say it a couple of times. I know, I know, teaching lesson learned (again!). Let me share with you how teaching absolute value through discovery made teaching the whole topic of mean absolute deviation and absolute value in general so much easier.

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