Education Technology


Four Fours

Activity Overview

This exercise in BIDMAS/BODMAS allows learners to explore calculations using just four 4s. The tns file has calculator, notes and lists and spreadsheet pages to allow learners to create and check calculations with answers from 1 to 100. The challenge to achieve all of the target numbers leads students to investigate a wide range of operations.

Before the Activity

Learners should have some familiarity with the order of operations and use of brackets in calculations. A video tutorial for this activity is available here.

During the Activity

Objective: the objective of this activity is to develop learners’ competence with using brackets and possibly more advanced operations.

After the Activity

This activity can be varied by using different numbers (for example the digits of the current year).