Today, i am quite amazed to learn a new way of finding HCF from my Sec 1E4 students. Wow, i didn't know that primary school they are taught this method. To find HCF of 385 and 396, they simply reduce it to the lowest, which is 35/36. Hence HCF = 385 divide by 35 = 11.
I taught them the textbook method which is using prime factorisation. It is so much more tedious. I think for a 1 or 2 marks question, this method will saves them alot of time.
Of course, i still make them learnt using the textbook method and asked them to use their pri school method as a check. Hmnn...the rest of the Sec 1E teachers, are you'll aware of this method? Please share anytime if you do learnt of any shortcuts for checking or doing any particular topics okay? Need to make sure we are more advanced than our students.. hee hee.
By the way, i just started HCF with the 1E4 students today. Will be still doing a few questions the next lesson before i start on LCM.
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Wow! Great to learn tricks from our students! You may want to share with them the usefulness of prime factorization like expressing terms into its prime factors (please add on the usefulness of this method that you know). I feel it is ok for pupils to use this shortcut from primary school to find HCF unless the qn insists that prime factorization is used.
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