Order of Operations

Another math concept we learned about this week was the order of operations, which we can use to come to a consensus about a "correct" answer when doing multiple operations. Perhaps you remember BEDMAS from school? This is what we learned this week! 

We were lucky to have Ms. Akra teach this lesson. First, we looked at a number sentence (9 + 3 x 6 - 4) and tried to come up with as many different answers as possible. We saw that there are lots of different answers we could potentially come up with using this number sentence. However, Ms. Akra told the class that the correct answer is actually 23. Was anyone able to find a way to perform the operation that would give us that answer? Of course! Then she introduced BEDMAS:

Brackets

Exponents (which we do not study in grade 6)

Division

Multiplication   ---> division and multiplication are done in the order they appear in the problem

Addition

Subtraction    ---> addition and subtraction are done in the order they appear in the problem.

Here are some videos that may help to explain this concept in more detail. We watched this first one in class:

TVO Kids Order of Operations