Using Hats To Teach Order of Operations

On the military rankings for order of operations theme i thought of a great idea. Split your students into groups and have each group make a different order of operation hat.

Thus, you should have six hats with each of these
( )
x^2
x
/
+
-
Now, have four volunteers pick four of the hats to put on and pick one volunteer to be your example. The goal of this exercise is for students to follow directions in the right order, thus they should follow the advice of the student wearing the parenthesis hat before the student wearing the multiplication hat.




Thus, give each of the four students with the hats on, four different sets of directions. Have them each give their directions to your volunteer student and see of the student follows them within the correct order of operation.