First, I used this interactive notebook page to explain finding the GCF and have students practice. It's very helpful for students to use two different colors to list the factors and circle the common factors. My students tend to kind of get things mixed up if they don't.
Read more about color-coding student's notes.
Next, I used this page to help students practice going between factored and distributed form. I got the idea from Math=Love. This was difficult for my students. The most difficult part for them was deciding if the expression was factored or not. Once we got going, they had a much easier time factoring the expressions.
This lesson takes longer than you would think! I spend lots of time making sure students can list and find the GCF.
