Lesson Plan
GEMDAS: Order of Operations
If your students understand PEMDAS and its role in the order of operations, GEMDAS will be a breeze. The “P” is replaced with a “G” to represent a wider range of grouping symbols.
Grade:
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Learning Objectives
Students will evaluate expressions with parentheses, brackets, or braces in numerical expressions.
Introduction
(5 minutes)- Review PEMDAS as an acronym for order of operations.
- Write an expression on the board that includes parenthesis only. Example: 60 – 4 x (7 -2) + 23 + 32
- Discuss the rules that must be followed and evaluate the expression.
- Rewrite the expression on the board.
- Explain to students that brackets, braces, and other symbols are often used in mathematical expressions as well.
- Have students insert other grouping symbols to this expression.
- Discuss the similarities and differences in the problems.
- Explain that in today’s lesson, they will use a new and more accurate acronym, GEMDAS, to solve problems that have grouping symbols.