I don’t know about you, but my students struggle to simplify the quadratic formula. They do a very nice job of putting the equation into standard form, identifying “a”, “b”, and “c”, and plugging those values into the quadratic formula. Then they start simplifying and everything falls apart. The multi-step nature of simplifying these expressions along with a lack of real understanding of the order of operations makes it rather impossible for them to arrive at a correctly simplified exact answer. Here’s my attempt to help them through the process.

This file contains 3 complete versions of a previewed flip-able to help students simply quadratic formula. This file includes:
• A version to print to help a single student in your classroom
• A version to print if you want all of your students to have this resource
• A version to print if you want to use this in class without providing the students with their own copy

This would be appropriate scaffolding to help struggling students be able to get a simplified exact answer to quadratic formula.