A “friendly” way of introducing factors to 4th grade students, is to have them work out factor pairs using only words they are familiar with. For example,
Two numbers multiply to 24, and sum to 11. What are they?
This question makes students work out all the factor pairs of 24:
- 1 x 24
- 2 x 12
- 3 x 8
- 4 x 6
without seeing unfamiliar words like “factors”, which could introduce anxiety.