New School Montessori 6th graders set up their white board outside on the Ginkgo House deck one warm day to teach factorization to the 4th grade students.
One of the tenets of a Montessori education is the multi-age classroom which provides opportunities for children to practice leadership skills, enjoy advanced and challenging work and to mentor other students.
Listed below is what Wikipedia had to say about factorization. As for me, I d prefer to have a New School 6th grader there to present it and answer all my questions.
3 × 5 is a factorization of the integer 15, and (x – 2)(x + 2) is a factorization of the polynomial x2 – 4.
Factorization is not usually considered meaningful within number systems possessing division, such as the real or complex numbers, since any can be trivially written as (xy)\times (1/y)} whenever is not zero. However, a meaningful factorization for a rational number or a rational function can be obtained by writing it in lowest terms and separately factoring its numerator and denominator.
