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Keep It or Cut It: The Abstraction Map
Created by Argraide
Updated October 27th, 2026
At a glance
- Staff pick
- Picked by the Argraide team
- Play mode
- 👥 Group
- Format
- 🖼️ 2D
- Length
- ⏱ About 20 minutes
- Subject
- Science
- Grade
- 6
- Curriculum
- Alberta
- Curriculum code
- 6CS1
About this activity
A live map office for the made-up town of Kestrel Creek. The big screen shows something complex and a job; every phone keeps only the details that job needs, and the big screen draws the class's map, app, symbol or control from those choices, so a missing detail visibly breaks the job and an extra one clutters it.
What students learn
- Apply abstraction: determine what details to keep and what to ignore for a stated purpose (6CS1)
- Remove unnecessary details and identify important information, and see that what is unnecessary depends on the purpose
- Generalize patterns: keep only what every example shares to make one symbol
- Identify abstractions in daily life (steering wheels, appliance controls, apps) as simplified versions of something complex
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