My interactive notebook pages for solving absolute value equations aren’t super fancy, but they got the job done!
I made a flip book to split the lesson into sections. First, I reminded students of the definition of absolute value (they always seem to think it just means “positive!”).
Next, I taught students how to solve absolute value equations where the absolute value was already isolated. I had them highlight everything inside the absolute value bars to show it more clearly. They thought it was stupid, until we moved to the last flap, which required students to isolate the absolute value. I still made them highlight everything in the absolute value bars so every step, so that they could see when the absolute value was isolated. I was trying to prevent them from immediately writing two equations.
On the next page, I had students do four practice problems. They had to highlight on each problem and work with their partner. Then, we would go over it as a class, and move on to the next problem. Next year, I think I want to include two more problems on this page and have them be examples where students have to add/subtract AND multiply/divide to isolate the absolute value.
