Order of Operations Scavenger Hunt

So many of you are off on Spring break, and I am SUPER jealous! In Massachusetts, we don't have one March spring break, but instead have a week in February and a week in April. That leaves us with this loooooooong, endless chunk of time right before state testing that I affectionately refer to as March Madness. The kids are going stir crazy, the teachers are tired, and the test is almost here. It's hard for everyone! So, in an effort to get my friends to pay attention, I decided it was time to jazz up my lesson plans. With the help of a super creative co-worker (who thought of so much of this) we decided to do an Order of Operations Easter Egg Hunt Egg-stravaganza!

I started off by reviewing the order of operations and using my "Order of Operations without Aunt Sally" freebie. This really helps my kiddos understand the correct way to perform the order of operations without relying so heavily on "PEMDAS."

If you are interested, you can read more about that from my previous post here.

Thanks to Easter egg sales and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, this lesson was pretty easy to put together. I found the Order of Operations bingo from the NCTM Illuminations website. I made a few modifications to make it work with an easter egg hunt though.

First, I labeled all the problems with letters so the kiddos could put them on their recording sheet and keep track of which one they solved. This would help me correct their work later on in the day, as well.

After that, I cut up the problems and removed the answer. Then, I put 2 or 3 of them in each Easter egg. 

Then, I hid the eggs (in plain sight) all around my classroom!

The original game is meant to be played as Bingo, so the recording sheet is built for that.

I love the idea of having the kids record their answers in a column that corresponds to the value, so I decided just to cut the word "bingo" off the top when I photocopied them. As the kiddos found the values of the expressions, they wrote down the value AND the the letter that I had labeled the strip of paper with. This way, when we went over our work it was easy to tell if they solved the expression correctly. To amp up the "fun factor" my kiddos were trying to fill an entire card with correct solutions for a small prize. 

So, with a few modifications, Order of Operations Bingo become our Egg Hunt Egg-stravaganza! How do you add the "fun factor" into teaching this time of year?

The Order of Operations & a freebie!

When I was a middle schooler (a few years ago now!) I learned the order of operations with the acronym PEMDAS. We remembered it with the pneumonic phrase "please excuse my dear aunt Sally." I definitely remember the phrase, and I always remembered what they stood for... but I didn't really conceptually understand what I was expected to do. I followed the order strictly as it was written- parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction. I remember struggling through algebra and wondering why sometimes division came before multiplication. My mind as further blown when a student moved in from another state and knew the order of operations as BEDMAS. How could that be the same?? The problem is pervasive- check out some of the popular meme pages for math problem postings. Grown adults solve problems incorrectly regularly, and argue about their strategy. Even those that solve it correctly generally back their answer up by sayings "I followed PEMDAS." That's troubling- because that is an acronym, not a mathematical procedure. 

I have been introducing the order of operations in a new way to my kiddos to try to prevent these types of misconceptions.

The two triangles above are what I give my kiddos now. They paste both into their math journals to refer back to. Why two different organizers? Well, I think it illustrates the fact that division and multiplication (or addition and subtraction) are to be completed in the order they appear, from left to right. If students constantly hear the operations in a specific order, many of them will memorize that and inadvertently solve problems in that order. The use of two graphic organizers with the operations reversed in each section helps reinforce that equal weight is given to "MD" and "AS" in each step. I also usually have my kiddos draw an arrow from left to right in the three lower sections of the triangle just to make it a bit more clear.

In fifth grade, we do not have to learn about square roots, but I give my kiddos the graphic organizer with square root on it anyway. I read an interesting article a few years back about "rules that expire" which inspired me to create it this way. The basic idea of the article was that throughout a child's life, they learn things in math that continually "expire" as they go on. For instance, when you multiply by 10, just add a zero! Well, that "expires" in fifth grade when they begin multiplying decimals. 42.5 x 10 is not 42.50! Conceptual understanding clears this up, of course, but trying to avoid the rules that "expire" is very helpful, too. In this case, the order of operations "expires" when square roots come into play if the students have not heard about them before. 

I love that the triangle shape takes the form of the problems as they are being solved, too! Each step along the way makes it smaller and smaller, until the work is eventually in the shape of a triangle. 

If you are interested in using this graphic organizer in your classroom, check the freebie here. I have posted several versions of the organizer, including as pictured above, with and without square roots, and a blank triangle to be filled in.  Enjoy!