Expanding and Factorising Card Sort

Much more than just a matching task. Students are required to recognise patterns and think outside the box to arrange these cards into a two-way table where each column and each row share a common factor (one of the grey cards).

This task often proves too challenging for less able KS3 classes, but with the right level of assistance and scaffolding it can work. 5 minutes into the task be prepared for students to loudly declare they “have no idea”, but share the clue slides with them and encourage them to persevere. It’s an enjoyably rich task that consolidates expanding and factorising single brackets.