This activity has been adapted from Figure it Out: Number Sense and Algebraic Thinking, book 1, levels

3-4 page: 2 and 3, The Great Factor Hunt.

Open up an EXCEL Spreadsheet. Type the numbers 1 and 2 in row 2 and 3 Highlight the two numbers and place your cursor on the black dot in the bottom right hand corner. Place your finger on the Ctrl key and drag until you get to number 20. This will automatically number the rows for you.

Now type the numbers 1 and 2 in columns B and C and repeat the above process. The columns are your timetables and the rows are your numbers. In cell B2 enter the following formula: =1/a2. Click ENTER. The = (equal) sign signals to Excel that you are going to calculate. The / (forward slash) means division. So: the formula says: divide 1 by the number in cell A2 (1 in this case) This formula now needs to be repeated down to 20.

HOLD ON: FEAR NOT! Excel does this all for you!
Highlight all the cells in column B down to 20. Go to EDIT and choose FILL, click on FILL DOWN. Voila! Your divisions have been done for you. Now repeat this for all the timetables to 10. TIP: A shortcut for FILL DOWN is using the Ctrl+D keys on your keyboard.

This is what the sheet should look like.

Jacira Meyerink

Excel Spreadsheets

2006

Now comes the great stuff! Discuss with the students what kind of numbers factors are. The answers should include: whole numbers and two factors multiply into a product. The latter is important as that means that every product has an even amount of factorsthis activity will prove that wrong. Get the students to highlight all the whole numbers in the timetables. HINT: Click on the first whole number, place your finger on the Ctrl key on your keyboard and KEEP IT THERE! Now click on the next whole number, you will see that your first number is still highlighted as well. Go through the whole sheet like this until all whole numbers have been highlighted. MAKE SURE YOU KEEP THAT FINGER ON THE Ctrl button all the time. If you dont you will have to start again. Once finished go to the fill bucket and give the highlighted cells a colour.

This is it!

This is where your discussions will start and the students will discover all sorts of things about the factors, products, squared and prime numbers, etc. Ask: What do the numbers represent that we highlighted? What are prime numbers, find them in this table and colour the rows Red. What factors has every number got? Why have some numbers got an uneven amount of factors? Colour the square number rows blue.

Jacira Meyerink

Excel Spreadsheets

2006

Use this sheet also to introduce division. Ask: I have 8 biscuits to divide between 10 children. In the table they can see that each child would get 0.8. This begs the discussion of division by 10 and the movement of the dot. Now I want to divide the 8 biscuits between 20 children. The students can see in their table that each would get 0.4. Soooo 0.4 is half of 0.8. You could now highlight all the rows from 10 down and delete (..dont worry Ctrl+Z will bring it all back). Now ask the students a similar question: 6 biscuits between 10 children and then 20 children. They should have made the link. The table can be used to look at 3/5 in decimals is 0.6. 5/5 equals 1. Once the discussions have been had let the students figure out activity two on page 3.

Jacira Meyerink

Excel Spreadsheets

2006