Order of Operations – 5 Real-Life BEDMAS Scenarios
- Grades
- Grades 5–7, Elementary, Middle School
- Pages
- 4
- File type
- Answer key
- Included
- Subject
- Math, Order Of Operations
- Topic
- Order of Operations, Word Problems
- Resource types
- Worksheets & Printables, Word Problems, Worksheets
- Answer key
- Included
About this resource
What's inside this resource
This BEDMAS worksheet builds order of operations one skill at a time across 19 problems. A banner at the top shows the six BEDMAS steps, notes that the rules match PEMDAS (parentheses = brackets), and reminds students that division and multiplication, like addition and subtraction, are worked left to right.
Students begin by naming the first step in four short expressions, then rewrite expressions one step at a time, including some with exponents. Five real-life story problems follow: museum tickets with a coupon, gift boxes on sale, a lemonade cash box, miles biked over three days and a car wash fundraiser. Along the way students choose or write the matching expression, decide when brackets are needed, and find the step where a worked solution went wrong. The last two tasks ask them to place brackets to hit a target and to fill in missing operation signs.
What's included
- Three student pages with 19 problems in seven formats, four of them introduced with a worked example
- An answer key page that shows every step, plus common mistakes to watch for
- Color and grayscale print PDF files of the whole worksheet
Grade level: grades 5-7, for introducing or reviewing order of operations.
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In the classroom
Teaching tips & learning objectives
Learning objectives
Apply BEDMAS, including exponents, to evaluate multi-step expressions.
Work division and multiplication, and addition and subtraction, from left to right.
Translate a real-life story into a matching numerical expression, using brackets only when the story needs them.
Teaching tips
Go over the banner's partner rule before item 4: students who add before they subtract get 11 instead of 17.
Watch item 3, where reading 3² as 3 × 2 leads to the wrong first step; the answer key lists this with the other common mistakes.
Try the answer key's calculator check: students type 15 + 6 × 2 into a basic calculator and compare the result with item 11, since some basic calculators work strictly left to right.
Skills covered
Identifying the first step: students name and solve the first operation in expressions such as 18 ÷ 3².
Step-by-step evaluation: each rewrite carries out one operation, ending in a single value.
Modeling with expressions: students choose between 4 × 9 − 5 and 4 × (9 − 5) for a coupon story and write their own expression for a three-day bike ride.
Good to know
Questions teachers ask about this resource
Does this worksheet include exponents?
Yes. Four items use squares or cubes, such as 5 × 2² − 7 and 3³ − (14 − 9) × 4.
Will it work for students who learned PEMDAS?
Yes. The order is the same, and the subtitle notes that parentheses and brackets mean the same thing.
What does the answer key show?
Every step for all 19 items in student order, the correct choices for the story problems, a list of common mistakes and a calculator tip.
Which grades is it for?
Grades 5-7, either when order of operations is first introduced or as review.
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Curriculum
Standards, concepts & topics
Standards
Standards
- 5.OA.A.1 — Use parentheses, brackets, or braces in numerical expressions, and evaluate expressions with these symbols.
- 6.EE.A.1 — Write and evaluate numerical expressions involving whole-number exponents.
- 5.OA.A.2 — Write simple expressions that record calculations with numbers, and interpret numerical expressions without evaluating them. For example, express the calculation “add 8 and 7, then multiply by 2” as 2 × (8 + 7). Recognize that 3 × (18932 + 921) is three times as large as 18932 + 921, without having to calculate the indicated sum or product.
Core concepts
Core concepts
order of operations
BEDMAS
PEMDAS
exponents
brackets
numerical expressions
Topics
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