Dear Pre-Calculus parents,

Your son/daughter is enrolled in CHAT Pre-Calculus this fall. If you haven't already done so, please buy your textbook. You should be able to find a used one online for $30-40. It is called Precalculus, by Larson & Hostetler, 6th edition, 2004, Houghton-Mifflin Company. The ISBN number is 0-618-31434-2. A good place to start is half.com or abebooks.com. (I do have some textbooks that can be rented for the year for $5 if you would rather not buy one. Contact me if you want to do this.) You also need to purchase either a TI-83 or TI-84 graphing calculator. You can buy them at any office store, Target, Walmart, etc.

Please visit www.mcg.net/nelson/chatmath.htm. There you can view or download the course syllabus, assignment list, homework expectations, and scope and sequence. The assignment list will be updated as we progress through the course if needed. There are 4 to 5 assignments given per week. You can decide which 5 days you will use as assignment days. If there is a test to be taken it is considered one of the 5 assignments for the week. My goal is to cover the majority of all 10 chapters. This is a college text that is written to be covered in a single semester college course. We will be spreading it out over the entire year as a high school course.

I have made a CD for each student. On that CD are the assignment list, assignment notes, assignment solutions, assignment supplements, a calculator tutorial, and pdf files of the overheads that I have made for our weekly class times. These overhead files are good summaries of each week's material, and an excellent tool for reviewing for a test. The assignment supplements will need to be printed for use with certain assignment problems. It will be up to you to monitor your student's use of the solution keys. Assignments are to be corrected at home and handed in weekly.

I will be sending an envelope home with the students the first week of class. In that envelope will be all of the tests for the semester. When you see on the schedule that there is a test as part of the homework, you are to administer the test as a closed book test (unless otherwise noted). They should then turn the test in to me the following week, along with their assignments. I will correct the test and return it to your student the following week.

As with any math class I have ever taught, I cannot stress enough the importance of not letting your students fall behind. Math is very sequential in nature. This is a senior-level (or college freshman-level) course and will not be a walk in the park. (o: It is very doable, though. Almost all of my former pre-calc students have gone on to take Calculus and done well.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns you may have, both now and as we progress through the school year. If your son or daughter is working on an assignment and has a question, I found that emailing the questions works the best. They can also try calling. Otherwise, we will always take time at the beginning of class to answer questions from the previous week.

I should also mention that I will be starting class at 8:45 a.m. instead of 9:00 a.m. in order to squeeze in a little more time together. Bring your Starbucks or Caribou and be ready to go! :-)

One last thing. I will be having an Algebra Review for the Pre-Calculus and Algebra 2 students the week before class starts. I will be giving the Pre-Calc students a set of 5 short assignments to be completed by the first day of class. If your student cannot attend the review, they should do the review on their own and complete the assignments. (The assignment list can be downloaded from the CHAT math website above as well as the textbook pages if you need them.) There is no cost for this.

Sincerely,

Kim Nelson, tutor
952-451-9901