In this lesson, students begin to rewrite quadratic expressions from standard form to factored form. Students associate the terms coefficient, constant term, and linear term to the appropriate parts of a quadratic expression. In particular, for a quadratic expression in the form , the coefficients are , and , the constant term is , and the linear term is . Students relate the numbers in factored form to the coefficients of the terms in standard form, looking for structure that can be used to go in reverse—from standard form to factored form (MP7).

This lesson looks at expressions only of the form and , where and are positive. This is so that arithmetic doesn’t get in the way of noticing the relationships between the numbers in factored form and the numbers in standard form. In a later lesson, students will encounter expressions of the form and .