MathGrade 7ages 12–13
🔢 Order of operations
Reading an expression left to right feels natural, but 2 + 3 x 4 isn't read that way: multiplication grabs the 3 before the 2 gets a turn.
Try this lesson freeNo card needed. The first lesson is free.
Download on the App StoreWhat your child learns
- Brackets are opened first.
- Powers come next.
- Multiplying and dividing come before adding and subtracting, because they describe how many groups and not how much was added.
- Between two operations of the same rank you work left to right.
The mistake most kids make here
Working left to right in the order it is written.
Try one question
How much is 2 plus 3 times 4?
2 + 3 × 4
- 20
- 14
- 9
Answer
14 — That's it. The multiply grabs the three before the two can reach it.
How Maya teaches it
Your child tells Maya what they did in class. She teaches this topic at her desk, asks questions with tappable answers, and when the answer is wrong she explains why that answer was tempting instead of saying “try again”. She remembers what did not land and comes back to it.
Your child has it when they can: Say what 2 plus 3 times 4 comes out to.
How to help at home
This mistake comes from a habit that works everywhere else in reading: left to right, one step at a time. Order of operations is the first place that habit needs an exception.
Act it out with objects: 3 groups of 4 crackers (that's the multiplication) sitting next to 2 loose crackers (the addition). Ask how many crackers total. The 3 x 4 has to happen first because it describes groups, not a running total.
When your child works strictly left to right and gets 20 for 2 + 3 x 4, say: "multiplication and division act like a tight pair that goes first — think of the 3 x 4 as already-grouped crackers before we add the loose ones."
A sign they've got it: they can explain, before calculating, which operation happens first in a mixed expression — not just get the right final number.
Questions parents ask
- Why does my child add before multiplying?
- Reading left to right is the default habit for almost everything else, including arithmetic taught earlier. Order of operations is a specific exception that has to be taught on purpose, not picked up by reading direction.
- What's an easy way to remember the order?
- Brackets first, then powers, then multiplication and division (left to right between them), then addition and subtraction (left to right between them). Acting it out with grouped objects helps more than memorizing the list alone.
- Why do multiplication and division come before addition and subtraction?
- Multiplication describes how many groups of something there are — it's building a quantity before it joins the addition, not just another step in a sequence of the same kind.
- How does Maya teach order of operations?
- Maya uses grouped objects — like crackers arranged in threes — to show why multiplication happens before addition, before asking the child to apply the rule to a written expression.
No card needed. The first lesson is free.
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