Today I introduced to Ben the concept of factoring polynomials. We first started with GCF- greatest common factor. I had Ben explain to me the difference between a product and a factor. He wasn’t positive at first, but when I showed him a few examples he recalled what it meant. I asked Ben to tell me some common factors of 36 and 24. We agreed they had a common factor of 4- but it was not the greatest factor they had in common. So we considered other factors and came up with 12. Next, I added the a variable to the 36 and asked Ben to factor the GCF. With guidance he wrote 12(x+3). For each new problem I added powers of x to make it more of a challenge. Ben was always able to follow the method. For one problem, I wanted to interject to help him, but he asked me not to and said he wanted to figure it out on his own. So I let him, and he came to the correct conclusion! I was very proud of him for taking ownership of his learning. He had an excellent class today.