Intent

This activity gives students opportunities to gain insight into the need for rules for order of operations and helps to establish the conventional rules. This activity also gives them additional experience with the algebraic logic of graphing calculators.

Mathematics

This activity reinforces order of operations by having students fix equations by inserting parentheses so that the resulting statements are correct.

Progression

This activity complements students’ work in 1-2-3-4 Puzzle.

Approximate Time

20 minutes for activity (at home or in class)

15 minutes for small-group discussion

Classroom Organization

Groups

Doing the Activity

This activity will require little or no introduction.

Discussing and Debriefing the Activity

You can give groups a few minutes to share their work on the assignment. Students should be able to resolve each other’s difficulties within this group discussion.

If you see common errors as you circulate among groups, you may want to draw the class together for clarification, perhaps calling on individual students to explain a given idea. Clear up any conflicts by having students go through the problem one small step at a time.

Supplemental Activity

1-2-3-4 Varieties (reinforcement) adds a rule to those that students used in 1-2-3-4 Puzzle now the digits must appear in numeric order. In addition to finding expressions for the first 25 whole numbers, students are asked to find the greatest possible answer given these rules and to make up their own variations to the original activity.