Expanding and Factorising
Factorising by the Highest Common Factor (HCF)

Expanding and Factorising

​Pre-Test

• Pre-Test

​Algebra skills {revision}

• Substitution
• Simplifying by collecting like terms

​​Algebra skills

• Rearranging formulas

​Expansion

• The distributive law
• FOIL expansion
• Special situations
• Further expansion

Factorisation

• Factorising by the Highest Common Factor (HCF)
• Factorising by sum and product {Part 1}
• Factorising by sum and product {Part 2}

Factorising is the reverse process of expansion. To factorise an algebraic expression, first the highest common factor (HCF) of all terms in the expression must be found. Then the reverse of the distributive law is used to write the expression in factorised form.