I’m not sure of the wisdom of having the students find which expressions are polynomials or not in this section, which is really just a continuation of quadratics. It probably should be left out for later on in the chapter.
The students really like the area method of expanding binomials. They also like working backward. The trick, of course, is for the students to recognize when they should use them instead of merely writing that (x + 3)² = x + 9².
