1. 1-8 Factoring Patterns

2. What is the first step?? GCF Why? 1.If you don’t do it at the beginning, you might not remember at the end 2. Some problems will not appear factorable unless the GCF is removed.

3. Perfect Square Trinomial Factors as

4. Why? a a a a b b

5. Difference of squares

6. Sum/Difference of cubes + + — — — +

7. 3 terms but not a pattern? This is where you use combinations of the first term with combinations of the third term that collect to be the middle term.

8. 4 or more terms? What do I do when I see something like this?

9. 4 or more terms? Look to group by pairs or 3 and 1 Pairs should have common factors when GCF’s are removed 3 with 1: the 3 should make a perfect squaretrinomial, which then will become a difference of squares

10. Practice Problems We will use the worksheets as our practice problems.