Year 6: Four Operations: Lesson 16 – Order of Operations

Year 6: Four Operations: Lesson 16 – Order of Operations Empower your Year 6 pupils to confidently tackle multi-step calculations with this curriculum-aligned lesson on the order of operations. This resource provides comprehensive teacher planning, differentiated worksheets, and reasoning tasks to ensure pupils grasp and apply the correct operation sequence—brackets, then multiplication and division, followed by addition and subtraction. Learners will: Apply the correct order of operations systematically (e.g., BODMAS/BIDMAS). Work through structured examples and contextual problems that reinforce processing accuracy. Develop reasoning skills by explaining their sequence decisions—responding to prompts such as, “Why do we handle multiplication before addition?” Benefit from differentiated tasks tailored to varying attainment levels, building fluency, accuracy, and conceptual clarity. Ideal for guided teaching, independent practice, or consolidation, this lesson scaffolds understanding of a foundational calculation strategy and equips pupils with confidence and consistency in complex arithmetic.