Factoring Unit
Apr 17th, 2009 by Nick
is in it’s first version. I’ve gone through the progression of these sheets with my geometry class. At the beginning of each class I reviewed the factoring they’d learned up to that point, with a quick example, and not too much student input, and then we’d do an example together of the new type of quadratic expression they were learning to factor that day. When we started, they knew little to nothing about factoring, and at the end of the week, I think a lot of kids have progressed. Each day they got the handout, answers on back, and a lot of time to work. See digression1.
The unit-factoring.pdf is the place to start. Download the folder, open that file, and you should be able to click the links to open other files and see the order in the Unit Skill Sequence2.
If you trust my computer (which I do), you can download a zipped up folder with just the pdf’s here.
Factoring Unit (zip file)
Otherwise, you can click the individual files to download them straight from the box3
- The motivation to do this with them came from having them take the Jesuit Algebra 1 challenge exam, and without doing factoring most were not able to do questions 26-40. By the way, if you are looking for a good algebra exam, they have put one together. If you check the “course offerings” page, they have three good exams. One as a challenge for students trying to place out of their high school geometry class. One for Algebra 1, and one for Pre-Algebra.
I’d love to build a better library of tests like these, but so far that’s what I’ve got. I think they’re pretty good. ↩
- this will work as long as all the files are in the same folder as unit-factoring.pdf ↩
- I recommend the browsing these boxes in list view. It “powns” the icon view in terms of ease of use, but for some reason I always get the icon view when I visit the page. ↩
[...] Factoring Unit A brief set of worksheets to guide students through the basics of factoring in about a week of classes. Looks good, but it came out after our semester was finished. If you try it with your students, please let me know how it works. [...]
Nick
I really like your “split the middle” technique. I am not sure how many techniques you want to show your students, but I have one that, from a purely algorithmic standpoint, is pretty easy for kids to grasp. Check the second example here: http://tinyurl.com/dca9uj
@David. I went through all these ways, but I think going for the “split the middle” has a pretty wide umbrella, so potentially boiling down and not teaching so many different skills sounds great. Ultimately, though it’s not that there are so many strategies to factoring. You have the “to split, or not to split” (though splitting always works, it’s not always the fastest” and then you need to know how to “reverse distribute” and pull out the GCF of an expression. There are a lot of related skills that go under the umbrella.
Thanks for sharing the video. I learned a new technique (your technique for a not equal to 1). My thinking would be that for most kids, cutting down on the text in the handouts would be helpful, but that comes when I have a short, clear, and effective way of conveying the skill.