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Welcome to my math blog! The purpose of this blog is to help you stay informed about our learning and experiences that have taken place during our math class. I have also included links your child (and you) may want to use in order to supplement math learning in 5th grade.

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Order of Operations: Cleared for Takeoff (worksheet)



Our objective today was the same.  I wanted my classes to understand the impact that changing the order has when performing a series of operations.  

So, we continued working with the Order of Operations using PEMDAS.  We worked on a worksheet entitled "Cleared for Takeoff" from the Feb/Mar 2013 issue of Mailbox Magazine.  To introduce the process for using PEMDAS, we solved the first 4 problems together.  I recorded this process:

PEMDAS:  Cleared for Takeoff

Once we had completed these problems together, I asked the students to complete the last 10 on their own.  Much thinking ensued!  The most difficult part for my classes was NOT automatically working left to right.  It was a struggle to have them refer back to PEMDAS to make sure they were doing the order correctly..... we got there though!


To finish off the class, I asked the students to:

Consider the following expression:

8 x 3 + [12 - (4 + 15 divided by 3)] + 9

Using words and/or numbers, describe the steps you would take to simplify the expression.

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