Tying Factoring to Graphs

This summer I spent some time re-vamping my lesson about the Zero Product Property and helping students to see the connection between factoring and the zeros of a parabola. This week I finally got to teach the lesson using all my new materials and I couldn't be more excited about how it turned out!

My students had fun learning how to factor , which is obviously important when we extend it to graphs of parabolas. This summer I made these fun doodle notes that I was so excited to try to introduce the Zero Product Property. We factored the problem and set the factors equal to zero and then I asked them to figure out how it was connected to the graph. They were excited to see a real-world application for factoring.

After we finished the first two problems, I had the students talk about the connection between the factors and the x-intercepts. Then they didn't have any trouble working backward given a graph to an equation. I started the students off on the Try It problems by asking them what the 5x^2 and 10x have in common - they sometimes forget GCF when they are so used to trinomials. Then I had the students complete the Try It problems on their own. I asked students to work the problem on the board so their peers could check their work.

 Then the students completed this dominoes activity, where they have to factor the quadratic equation, set the factors equal to zero and match it to a graph. Once they match the graph, the other side of the domino gives them their next problem. I liked the structure of this, and the ease at which students completed it. I love days were everyone feels successful!

As groups finished, I traded them for this coloring activity. Some students chose to work from the graphs to the equations, and some chose to factor and solve the equations from the answer bank.

My students always love any chance to color. I love seeing them break out their sparkly pens, fancy highlighters, or boxes of colored pencils and add some flair to their work.

I know I did a MUCH better job teaching this concept this year. I just finished grading their Quadratics Test and nearly all of them aced this matching question. That was NOT the case last year, so I'm glad these activities helped them to practice and understand this concept! You can buy a mini-bundle of the three activities included in this post in my TpT store.