Summary
Breaking up is hard to do—unless you mean breaking big numbers up into their factors, that is! In this BrainPOP movie, Tim and Moby break down the basics of factoring. You’ll learn how all numbers are made up of factors that can be multiplied together to get a product. You’ll discover how finding the GCF (or greatest common factor) of two numbers can be extremely useful when you’re tiling a bathroom. And you’ll explore the role of factor trees in breaking numbers down to their smallest whole pieces, a process called prime factorization. That’s right—money doesn’t grow on trees, but numbers certainly do!
Viewer safety
Ages 7+
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Teaching resources
Discussion questions
A few questions to talk through after watching Factoring:
- What is one new thing you learned about factoring?
- Can you explain it to a partner in your own words?
- Where might you see this in the real world?
- What is one question you still have?
Quick work-a-long
Try it:
- Write one sentence explaining factoring.
- Draw or give one example of your own.