options: Number & Operations in Base Ten: students learn to work with the base-ten system and build place value understanding.

Operations & Algebra: students learn to solve problems using algebraic thinking and operations such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. They may learn to identify and explain arithmetic patterns, evaluate or manipulate numerical expressions, and reason with equations and inequalities.

Number Systems and Quantity: students learn to understand the complex number system and reason quantitatively.

Modeling: students learn to choose and use appropriate mathematics and statistics to analyze real-world empirical situations, improve decisions, and report on their conclusions and the reasoning behind them.

Functions: students learn to define, use, and evaluate functions to model relationships between quantities.

Counting & Cardinality: students learn to know number names and the count sequence, count to tell the number of objects, and compare numbers.

Number & Operations - Fractions: students learn to understand fractions as numbers and may work with them using addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

Statistics & Probability: students learn to analyze and produce data distributions, and build understanding of univariate and bivariate data. They learn to interpret data, make statistical inferences, justify conclusions, understand rules of probability, and use probability to make decisions.

Ratios & Proportional Relationships: students learn to recognize, describe, represent, and reason with ratios, rates, proportional relationships, and percent.

Geometry: students learn to classify geometric figures by their properties, and understand and compare the relationships between them. Students develop and use formulas to compute lengths, areas, and volumes, and they use transformations to generate new shapes and compare existing ones. Geometry can be studied with and without coordinates.

Measurement & Data: students learn to work with data and measure attributes such as time, money, length, area, and volume. They may learn to compare measurements to operations and convert between different units of measure.
problem_activity: Activity
In this activity, students use surface area as a context to extend the order of operations to expressions with exponents. The context provides a reason to evaluate the exponent before performing the multiplication.
Launch
Give students 10 minutes of quiet work time, followed by a class discussion.
Reading: MLR6 Three Reads.
Use this routine to support students’ comprehension of the situation. In the first read, students read the text with the goal of comprehending the situation (e.g., Jada and Noah have different solutions for the surface area of the same cube). In the second read, ask students to identify important quantities that can be counted or measured (e.g., the side length of the cube; the number of faces of a cube; the area of each face of the cube). In the third read, reveal the question, “Do you agree with either of them? Explain your reasoning.” Ask students to brainstorm possible strategies to answer the question (e.g., Find the area of each face of the cube. Multiply the area by 6 to find the surface area of the cube). This will help students concentrate on making sense of the situation before rushing to a solution or method.
Design Principle(s): Support sense-making
Student Facing
A cube has side length 10 inches. Jada says the surface area of the cube is 600 in
2
, and Noah says the surface area of the cube is 3,600 in
2
. Here is how each of them reasoned:
Jada’s Method:
\(6 \boldcdot 10^2\)
\(6 \boldcdot 100\)
\(600\)
Noah’s Method:
\(6 \boldcdot 10^2\)
\(60^2\)
\(3,\!600\)
Do you agree with either of them? Explain your reasoning.
Student Response
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Activity Synthesis
In finding the surface area, there is a clear reason to find
\(10^2\)
and then multiply by 6. Tell students that sometimes it is not so clear in which order to evaluate operations. There is an order that we all generally agree on, and when we want something done in a different order, brackets are used to communicate what to do first. When an exponent occurs in the same expression as multiplication or division, we evaluate the exponent first, unless brackets say otherwise. Examples:
\((3\boldcdot 4)^2 = 12^2 = 144\)
, since the brackets tell us to multiply
\(3\boldcdot 4\)
first. But
\(3\boldcdot  4^2 = 3\boldcdot  16 = 48\)
, because since there are no brackets, we evaluate the exponent before multiplying.
If students bring up PEMDAS or another mnemonic for remembering the order of operations, point out that PEMDAS can be misleading in indicating multiplication before division, and addition before subtraction. Discuss the convention that brackets or parentheses indicate that something should be evaluated first, followed by exponents, multiplication, or division (evaluated left to right), and last, addition or subtraction (evaluated left to right).


correct_option_index: 1