Prime Factorization and GCF

What a week! One snow day and 2 late starts so far!
I just realized that I haven't written in almost 10 days.....I guess thinking about writing doesn't get the words on the page, huh?

Anyway, we worked on prime factorization at the end of last week, using both the factor tree method and the ladder method. Most of the students prefer the factor tree (I think that's because they've seen it before and feel comfortable with it), but a few like the ladder method. We've been using Prime Factorization Footloose to practice this skill; those who are finished have moved on to using the Factors and GCF Footloose cards.

We have discussed GCF briefly, several times, and it is really a review for them (based on their pretest results); the biggest problem here is that they often skip factors when they list them, and miss the GCF because of missing factors. Today, we're going to discuss using prime factorizations to find the GCF. I never learned this way when I was growing up, but I really like it because it eliminates the need to find every factor of a number. We'll see how they like it...

Have a great day!

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