Looking for engaging factoring activities for your Algebra 1 or Algebra 2 students? Check out these creative and hands-on factoring games and puzzles that will help make factoring fun!
Factoring Polynomials
I love using X Puzzles to introduce factoring quadratics. These puzzles are also known as sum and product puzzles since the goal of the puzzle is to find the two numbers that have a given sum and product. Years ago, I found a set of 5 pages of X Puzzles. I can no longer find …
I am really liking these quadratic area puzzles from Chritsopher (Bow Tie Teacher on twitter) that are posted for free on TES. They are inspired by Naoki Inaba‘s Area Maze puzzles with a quadratic spin on things. For next year, I think I would like to do some sort of activity at the beginning of …
I’ve been a fan of this factoring puzzle for factoring quadratic trinomials since I worked through it at a Common Core workshop I attended (OGAP) in the summer of 2013. Over the last couple of days, I have been going back through these resources that I originally blogged about and giving each resource its own …
I shared this shared factors puzzle on twitter recently, but I thought I should share it on my blog as well. Shared Factors Puzzle Each side of the square shares a factor with each of its neighboring sides. Determine the missing values that make this statement true. This would be a great task for including …
I’m really pushing the box method this year in my Algebra 2 classes, so Christie Bradshaw’s area model puzzles were a perfect introduction to the box method before we jumped into factoring using the box method!
I created this factoring quadratics foldable for my Algebra 1 students to glue in their interactive notebooks. I had to make a lot of compromises with this topic that made me sad. But, I just didn’t have the time I usually have for this topic. This was mainly due to losing a large amount of …
I wasn’t quite sure what to blog about today, so I started looking through my drafts folder in Blogger. I ran across this post on a question stack I created for factoring trinomials during Algebra 1’s unit on polynomials. I first blogged about this activity in November of 2015. Here’s the link to my original …
I decided to put together a set of step-by-step directions for factoring polynomials using the box method. When I posted my interactive notebook pages for our Algebra 1 unit on Polynomials, I said that I was going to post step-by-step photographs of how to use the box method to factor polynomials. Here’s that post. Begin …
I always have my Algebra 1 students look for patterns before we begin factoring polynomials. Free Download of Looking for Patterns in Factoring Quadratics
Today I want to share with you a factoring quadratics question stack activity that I created for my Algebra 2 students. This year, we got off to a very rough start with factoring polynomials in Algebra 2. I had the brilliant idea that I would show my students how to factor using algebra tiles before …
I’ve always taught factoring out the GCF of a polynomial the way I was taught to do it. And, historically, my students have always struggled with this. I think they usually get the gist of what we’re doing, but they usually struggle with the GREATEST part of GCF. Last year, I saw Jan Lichtenberger’s post …
I created this factoring vs distributing card sort activity to show my Algebra 2 students that factoring isn’t something to be afraid of. By the time they get to Algebra 2, the distributive property is something they should hopefully be able to do in their sleep. So, I wanted them to see that factoring …
I created this factoring quadratics using the box method foldable for my Algebra 2 students to glue in their interactive notebooks. My students (and I) seemed to appreciate the visual nature of this approach. Alternate Version of Factoring Quadratics Using the Box Method Foldable I updated this foldable in 2017 when I used it with …
If you spend much time in my classroom at all, you will quickly realize that I use lots of weird analogies. Some analogies I use once and forget about. Other times I start analogies without really thinking about them and end up regretting my decision. And, sometimes, my analogies actually work and I end up …
I want to highlight this factoring polynomials square puzzle shared by Public Schools of North Carolina in their Resources for Algebra Blackline Masters collection (page 2 of PDF). The file no longer exists online, but an archived version still exists due to the Internet Archive. These square puzzles are often known as “Tarsia puzzles.” Make …
Today I want to share some graphic organizers I created to remind students the steps for factoring quadratics. We filled these out and glued them in our algebra interactive notebooks. This year, I am taking a big risk with my Algebra 1 kiddos. I taught them to factor quadratic trinomials with a leading coefficient greater …