The left and right sides of Roanoke Catholic middle school students’ brains collided this week when Mrs. Brajdic turned a humdrum math lesson into a creative art class.
In math problems involving the Order of Operations — aka PEMDAS, or “Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication and Division, and Addition and Subtraction” — parentheses outrank exponents, which outrank multiplication and division, which outrank addition and subtraction (see example on right).
Rather than work with just a bunch of random numbers, Mrs. Brajdic had her students create problems using their shoe size, ZIP code, year they were born, lucky number, even parents’ age (uh-oh). They fashioned these problems within their very own work of art, where they’re now posted in the halls.
