Order of Operations Worksheets

Review the sequence with a poster or the PEMDAS phrase, then hand out the page. Students work for fifteen to twenty minutes, writing each step on its own line rather than skipping to the answer, and circling the operation they do first. Check with the answer key and look at where a wrong answer came from. Because all division is exact and answers stay positive, errors almost always trace back to the order.

The core idea is that multiplication and division happen before addition and subtraction, and anything in parentheses goes first. Students get stuck by working left to right, or by treating multiplication as always ahead of division when they are equal and should go left to right. This builds on the four operations and leads to expressions with exponents and then to algebra with variables, where the same order rules apply.

Expressions has three settings. Choose No parentheses for a first lesson, With parentheses for typical practice (the default), and Four terms for stronger students. Twelve problems works for step-by-step writing; thirty is a quick check. Have students underline the operation they do first in each problem to keep the order visible.

Does this page use exponents?

No. It covers parentheses, multiplication, division, addition and subtraction with whole numbers. Exponents are best added in a later lesson, so students aren't juggling too many new rules at once.

Why are the answers never negative?

So a negative result tells you something went wrong with the order. It gives students a built-in warning sign, and it keeps the focus on the sequence rather than on signed arithmetic.

What if multiplication and division both appear?

Work them left to right, as they come. The same applies to addition and subtraction. Many students think multiplication always goes first, so point this out with an example like 12 ÷ 3 × 2.