Working forwards
These puzzles are useful as a starter or quick introductory activity for expanding standard quadratic expressions.
Working backwards
Once students have got the hang of how these work, ask them to work the other way around and provide the product and sum to give the required answers.
When dealing with negatives, I ask students to initially ignore the signs and just focus on finding two factors of the top number that they can “use to make” the bottom number. This way of phrasing the process helps them to get round the ever-present issues with negative numbers. We then discuss how the signs can be added to make the puzzle work.
