Education Technology


Number Crunching! Number Munching!

Activity Overview

Students comprehend the order of operations and apply this understanding to simplify and evaluate expressions. They also learn to represent problems that involve variable quantities with expressions and use the calculator as a tool to solve problems.

Before the Activity

  • See the attached PDF file for detailed instructions for this activity
  • Print pages 28 - 30 from the attached PDF file for your class
  • During the Activity

    Distribute the pages to the class.

    Follow the activity procedures:

  • Understand the keystrokes required to perform mathematical operations on the calculator
  • Enter expressions with and without parenthesis and find the results
  • Understand the order of arithmetic operations to be followed when simplifying an expression


  • Simplify and evaluate expressions using the appropriate order of operations
  • Use the calculator to store variables and evaluate expressions
  • Apply these concepts to solve problems on the Student Activity pages
  • After the Activity

    Students complete the Student Activity pages.

  • Review student results
  • As a class, discuss questions that appeared to be more challenging
  • Re-teach concepts as necessary