<![CDATA[Purpose of this study is to find out and describe the increase in activities and understanding of mathematical concepts using a realistic mathematics education approach to grade VII students of SMP Negeri 23 Merangin in the 2018/2019 academic year. This research is a classroom action research whose implementation consisted of four stages, namely planning, action, observation and reflection which were carried out at SMP N 23 Merangin with the research subjects being all students of class VII C SMP N 23 Merangin 2018/2019 Academic Year totaling 28 people. The study was conducted in two cycles, each cycle consisting of three meetings. Data were collected using observation and evaluation, observation in the form of student activity sheets, for evaluating tests of understanding mathematical concepts in the form of essay test questions. Data analysis techniques use simple statistics. The results of the study indicate that a realistic mathematics education approach can increase the activity and understanding of students' mathematical concepts and the average value of students 68.83 in the first cycle to 88.36 in the second cycle. The increase in students' mastery learning in the first cycle was 14 students or 50% increased in the second cycle to 26 students or 88.7%. Thus the completeness of students' understanding of mathematical concepts has reached more than. 75. Based on the results of this study it is expected that teachers can use to add models in learning so as to improve the ability of students in learning.]]>
