Common Core Algebra Preparation

The Common Core and other standards cover many algebraic topics before the first actual High School Algebra course. In practice, not all students learn all these topics thoroughly before starting High School, and this becomes a major impediment for them. We therefore include the introductory lessons below in our algebra courses, but ideally students will work through them in earlier grades, or in this separate preparatory course. This short course is thus designed to be taken during the summer before High School, or concurrently with the first semester of High School Algebra, if necessary.

These interactive lessons use dynamic graphing and guided discovery to strengthen and connect symbolic and visual reasoning. They give the student a hands-on visual exposition of many algebraic topics, reinforced by adaptive exercises and randomly generated tests. All exercises and tests are checked and graded automatically. Hover the mouse over a link below to see an example from that lesson, or click on a test link to see a concise summary of a group of lessons. Relevant standards are listed after each lesson’s exercises. We also provide a course glossary.

Students should have scratch paper available, access to (software or hardware) numeric calculators except during the Arithmetic Review chapter, and other students or a teacher to ask for help when they are stuck. All students are encouraged to both give and receive mathematical explanations with their peers. Please send us your comments, questions and suggestions.