The material for the first week is Chapter 1 of the textbook, which reviews arithmetic that you should already understand. But in case it's been a while since you did mathematics, or you never quite got the hang of fractions or negative numbers, now is the time to get that material down cold! (For now, I'll skip material on sets, order, absolute values, and exponentiation; we'll come back to those later.)
After that, we'll get into Algebra proper in Section 1.7, then moving on to Chapter 2, on solving equations (and applications: word problems). Before Section 2.8 (on inequalities), I'll review material on order from Chapter 1. Then I'll review sets and absolute value (respectively) before covering Sections 8.6 and 8.7 (the only material not in Chapters 1–5).
After that, it's on to Chapters 3, 4, and 5, pretty much straight through, (except skipping Sections 3.7 and 4.6). Chapter 3 is about graphing, Chapter 4 is about solving systems of equations (where you have more than one equation, so you can solve for more than one variable at the same time), and Chapter 5 is about polynomials, which will prepare you for Intermediate Algebra. Just before Chapter 5, I'll review the last skipped material from Chapter 1, on exponentiation.
In sum, we'll cover Chapters 1–5 from the textbook, as well as the last two Sections of Chapter 8. It's a lot of material for 10 weeks, so the class has to move pretty fast; please talk to me early if you need help!
On November 5 Monday, I will turn in midterm grades to the college; this is why the midterm exam is one class day earlier, on November 2 Friday. The college should have those grades available for you on November 6 Tuesday. Similarly, your final grades should be available on December 15 Friday.
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