Orders Please

Aims & Learning Outcomes

The programme aims to:

• Describe the order of precedence of arithmetic operations, giving illustrations of their use.
• Provide entertaining lesson material, with opportunities for further exploration.
• Demonstrate a practical, problem-solving approach.

After watching the programme, students should:

• Recognise that the order in which operations are carried out affects the result of a calculation.
• Understand that brackets are used in expressions to clarify the required order of calculation.
• Understand how to perform calculations, using the convention of brackets first, followed by division, multiplication, addition and then subtraction (BODMAS: Brackets, Of, Division, Multiplication, Addition, Subtraction).
• Realise that to use a calculating machine you need to know the order in which it performs operations, so that you can enter values in the correct order to achieve the required result.