A Teacher's Guide to Teaching Factoring (Part 2): Planning your instruction of factoring quadratic expressions
In my last blog post ( A Teacher's Guide to Teaching Factoring (Part 1): Defeat the Dread & Ditch the Gimmicks ), I wrote about why I DREADED teaching factoring quadratic expressions in my first few years of teaching Algebra 1 & 2. I shared that my dread was fueled by 3 main truths: 😫 Factoring quadratic expressions is a complex process! There's a wide variety of special "shortcuts", and -believe me!- I've tried them all! 😩 My students dreaded factoring, too! Since students didn't really understand what factoring IS, they had a level of discomfort & a lack of confidence when factoring quadratic expressions. 😩 I felt like I didn't have enough time or enough resources to build student understanding of factoring. I shared at the resolution of my previous post that I had reflected on my teaching & decided 2 things: 1) I needed to schedule the time that my students needed to really understand factoring. 2) I needed to fi