About this worksheet

Building on the order of operations rule, this worksheet introduces brackets, which must always be calculated first before any other operation. Year 4 students get focused practice recognising and evaluating bracketed expressions.

The worksheet follows EduLift’s four-part structure, with 29 questions worth 53 marks in total. The Fluency section (16 marks) has students evaluate expressions containing brackets, working out the bracketed part first. The Core section (21 marks) applies this skill to real-world contexts such as sharing costs, planting rows and splitting donations, where students write and solve their own bracketed expressions. The Reasoning section (9 marks) asks students to explain why brackets are calculated first, correct a common student error, and compare how brackets change an expression’s result. The Challenge section (7 marks) extends students with bracket-placement puzzles and expression-building problems.

Every question and answer on this worksheet has been checked for accuracy, and the worksheet has been reviewed for clear layout and age-appropriate language before publishing.

This worksheet is aligned to the WA SCSA Mathematics curriculum for Year 4, under the Number and Algebra strand (code WA4MNAOO1), and is free to download and use for classroom or home practice.

Common errors we see in tutoring

• Calculating multiplication or division before finishing the brackets
• Only partially working out the bracketed part before moving on
• Forgetting that brackets override the usual order of operations
• Misplacing brackets when writing an expression from a word problem