In this lesson, students practice using the distributive property to write equivalent expressions when there are rational coefficients. Students learn the terms factor and expand to describe applying the distributive property in opposite directions, that is, changing a sum of products to a product of a factor and a sum, or vice versa. Some of the expressions that students factor have a variable as the common factor instead of a constant, such as . This shows how the distributive property is the basis for combining like terms. As students apply the distributive property to factor or expand expressions, they make use of structure (MP7).