Grade 4 Order of Operations Worksheets — Multiply and Divide First
Grade 4 is where the order of operations is worth meeting, a year before it is examined. Both the Common Core and the UK National Curriculum place the formal rule — and the brackets that arrive with it — in Grade 5, so these sheets are preparation rather than coverage: no brackets, no powers, no negative numbers, and never a step that takes a child below zero on the way to the answer. What is left is the half of the rule a nine-year-old can already act on. The difficulty control walks it in three steps: Multiply, then add or subtract, then Bring in division, then Three operations. Set the difficulty and question count below and the worksheet redraws instantly.
Four sub-skill cards sit under the generator. Two Operations is the one this page opens on — decide whether the × or the ÷ happens before the + or the −. Spot the First Step asks only which part of the line you would work out first, which a student can answer correctly long before they can carry a whole expression to a number. Right or Wrong turns the page around: each line already has an answer written in, and the job is to say whether it is right. Find the first wrong step (HOTQ) turns it around further still — it hands over somebody's whole worked solution, every line of it arithmetically true, and asks which line was the first to take a step out of turn. Equal-rank lines — where every step is the same rank so position decides, as in 24 ÷ 6 × 2 — run through three of those four cards rather than having one of their own: there was a Left to Right card here until September 2026, and it was withdrawn because its numbers were smaller than those on the Grade 1 Mental Maths card printing the same questions. Tick the answer key box and the answers print on their own page, and the link in your address bar stores the exact worksheet, so you can reprint it or hand it to someone else and Shuffle gives you a fresh set at the same settings.
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Order of Operations · Grade 4
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Grade 4 · 2 pages · A4More Grade 4 order of operations skills
Each one generates a different kind of question, with its own three levels and answer key.
- Two OperationsNo brackets: decide whether to multiply, divide, add or subtract first.
- Spot the First StepSay which part of the line you would work out first — you never finish the sum.
- Right or WrongAn answer is already written in. Work the line out yourself and say whether it is right.
- Find the first wrong step (HOTQ)A worked answer with one wrong step in it. Find the first step that breaks the rule and write the step that belongs there.
What each level generates
Grade 4 two operations — the exact skill behind each difficulty setting, straight from the generator.
- Level 1Multiply, then add or subtract
- Level 2Bring in division
- Level 3Three operations
Grade levels follow the progression common to most English-language curricula — not one specific national curriculum. Every level shows exactly what it generates, so you can check the fit with your own program. See the full scope & sequence →
What Grade 4 is preparing for, and what it is not
This page makes no claim on a Grade 4 standard, because there is not one to claim: the convention and its grouping symbols belong to the year above. Nothing is lost by meeting the priority of × and ÷ early — children already use it whenever they work out three packs of four and two more — but a great deal is lost by meeting brackets, powers and the whole acronym in one week. So there is no grouping symbol anywhere on these sheets, every number a child is given to work with stays at 8 or below, and every division is built to come out exactly. The arithmetic is kept small on purpose, so that a wrong answer says something about the rule rather than about the times tables. That is a rule about the numbers on offer rather than about every number on the page: a two-step line has always asked a child to hold a larger one part-way through, and Find the first wrong step is simply the card that writes those down instead of leaving them unsaid.
Use them as a bridge rather than as a unit. A student who can name the step that comes first, and who works 20 − 4 − 3 from the left without hesitating, arrives at the Grade 5 sheets with only the brackets left to learn. If the sums themselves are what is going wrong rather than the order, the session is better spent on times tables or division facts and this page will still be here afterwards.
The two mistakes these sheets exist for
The first is reading strictly left to right: 3 + 4 × 2 answered as 14 instead of 11, because the addition came first on the page. It is not carelessness — left to right is what every other line of writing has taught them — so it is worth saying out loud that this is the one place the rule changes. Ask for the multiplication or division to be lightly underlined before any answer is written, and the error mostly disappears on its own.
The second is the opposite, and it is the one the acronym causes: reading PEMDAS or BODMAS as a strict pecking order, so 24 ÷ 6 × 2 comes out as 2 and 20 − 4 − 3 comes out as 19. Multiplication does not outrank division, and addition does not outrank subtraction; each pair is worked left to right. The Left to Right card is a whole sheet of exactly that, which is the point — a student who gets it wrong gets it wrong twenty-four times and cannot finish the page without noticing.
Both mistakes are printed on purpose on the Right or Wrong card. Every line there already has an answer written in, and it is either the correct one or the number you get by making one of those two mistakes: working straight across, or taking the × before the ÷ and the + before the −. Nothing on that sheet is wrong in a way nobody would be wrong, so a line cannot be crossed out on sight — a student who has the rule and a student who has not will disagree about every single one of them, which is what makes it worth marking.
Frequently asked questions
▸Is the order of operations a Grade 4 topic?
Not formally. Most curricula, including the Common Core and the UK National Curriculum, introduce the rule and its brackets in Grade 5. These sheets are the run-up to that year: they practise the priority of × and ÷ over + and −, and the left-to-right rule for equal steps, with no brackets and no powers at all.
▸Why are there no brackets on these Grade 4 worksheets?
Because brackets are the Grade 5 half of the rule, and a bracket changes what comes first — which is the very thing this grade is still settling. Adding them here would ask a student to learn the priority and its exception at once. The Grade 5 sheets open on brackets, and four more of their cards use them.
▸What is the Right or Wrong card for?
It is a marking exercise rather than a working one. Each line comes with an answer already written in, and the student says whether it is right — writing the correct answer instead when it is not. The wrong ones are not random: each is the number you get by making one of the two mistakes this grade makes, so a line cannot be dismissed on sight and a student who has not got the rule yet will disagree with the key on every single question. It is the quickest of these sheets to mark and the most useful to talk about afterwards.
▸What do the three difficulty levels do?
On the Two Operations sheet this page opens with, Multiply, then add or subtract gives two operations with no division in them, Bring in division always includes one exact division, and Three operations stretches the line to four numbers. Left to Right, Spot the First Step, Right or Wrong and Find the first wrong step each have their own three levels, and the difficulty control moves within whichever card you are on. On Find the first wrong step the three are cut by how many of the line's steps are × or ÷ — one, then two, then none at all.
▸How big do the numbers get?
Nothing you are given to work with goes above 8, and nothing below 2. Answers and part-answers are a different matter and always have been — 7 × 7 + 8 asks a Grade 4 child to hold 49 on the way through, and Right or Wrong prints totals into the nineties. Find the first wrong step is the one card that shows those part-answers rather than leaving them in your head, and none of them goes above 48. Every division lands on a whole number and no step ever takes the running total below zero, so a Grade 4 student can work any line on this page without meeting a fraction or a negative.
▸How many problems should a Grade 4 sheet have?
Ten to twelve is plenty. Each line takes two or three deliberate steps, and a short accurate set is worth more here than a long one — the point is the habit, not the volume. Use the question-count stepper to size the sheet to your session.
▸Can I print an answer key?
Yes — tick the answer key box and the answers print on their own page at the end, numbered to match the questions, so you can hand out the worksheet and keep the key aside. The key answers whatever the card actually asks: on Spot the First Step it gives the step rather than the total, on Right or Wrong it gives Yes, or No together with the answer that should have been there, and on Find the first wrong step it gives the number of the wrong line and the step that belonged there — Step 2, 6 × 4 = 24.