Foundations and Pre-Calculus 10 is a course designed to stimulate and further develop your mathematical thinking abilities. Mathematics is one way of trying to understand, interpret, and describe our world. Components integral to the nature of mathematics include change, constancy, number sense, patterns, relationships, spatial sense, and uncertainty. These components are woven throughout this course.

Materials needed for each class:

• Pen/pencil (several colours will help as we sometimes do notes in different colours to emphasize key points)
• Textbook
• Calculator (any scientific calculator that has trigonometric functions (sin, cos and tan) on buttons is appropriate
• Notebook 
• Ruler
• Graph paper

Course Topics

1. Measurement Systems
2. Surface Area and Volume
3. Right Triangle Trigonometry
4. Exponents and Radicals
5. Polynomials
6. Linear Relations and Functions
7. Linear Equations and Graphs
8. Solving Systems of Linear Equations Graphically
9. Solving Systems of Linear Equations Algebraically

Class Rules/Expectations

• Be on time!  Students who are regularly late can expect to make up that time at lunch or after school.
• My room is a no-cell phone room.  Students may have their phones out for the first 5 minutes of class while they're organizing their work, but they must then be put away.  If they are out, for any reason, they will be confiscated until the end of the day.  During the last 5 minutes of class, you may be given some time to fill in your agenda book, but you will be told when they may be used.
• Food and drink are permitted, but students are expected to throw out all garbage before they leave the class room.
• Students may not leave the room without permission.
• Respect and tolerance for each other.  I try to respect all student opinions and ideas, and I expect all students to try and extend the same courtesy towards each other. 

Homework and Assignments:

Role Assignments/Warmups:  Students will regularly have a Role Assignment/Warmup Quiz at the beginning of most classes.  Some of these will be collected and marked for assignment marks, while others will be marked by students and reviewed in class.

Textbook work:  Assignments are practice for tests and quizzes and are an important part of the course.  As part of your practice, you should:

• Complete all homework, showing your reasoning and all work to explain how you arrived at your solution.
• Check your answers with the back of the textbook.  If you have any that are incorrect, you need to find out what mistake you have made, or what steps you have done incorrectly.  You can check with your textbook, teacher or one of your friends if you are having difficulty.

All homework for each chapter will be collected as a package on the day before the Chapter Test.  It will be checked for completion, organization and to see if all work/reasoning has been shown clearly.  Homework checks will be a determining factor in assessing Work Habits for your report card.

Evaluation:

During the year, there are 8 chapter tests and 2 cumulative exams.  There will also be some assignments, warmup quizzes and projects.  These will count for 60% of your overall mark.  Your cumulative exams will count for 10% of your overall mark and the final exam will count for the remaining 20%.  Your overall mark will be calculated a bit differently than many of you are used to.

A mark will be assigned from each chapter, and each chapter will be weighted differently.  You will receive an overall mark for each chapter that incorporates all assignments, quizzes, tests and project work for that chapter.  A mark given for the whole chapter will help you assess whether there are topics you should review at a later date.

You will also be given a mark to reflect your communication of ideas.  While this may be explanations in words, this will generally be what you have called "showing your work" in past years.  Communication is extremely important in mathematics, where our explanations of what we do are done through the use of symbolic notation instead of words. As such, we must be very conscious of how we are explaining the steps we used to solve a problem.  Communication will count for 10% of your mark.

Chapter Work	60%
Cumulative Tests	10%
Communcation	10%
Final Exam	20%

Tests

It is the policy of the Math Department to not allow students to rewrite tests for marks.  A student may rewrite a test at any time, but it will only be to check to see if they have corrected any gaps in their understanding and will not be used in determining their report card grade.  However, there may be opportunites to demonstrate your understanding/learning other than tests if you are not satisifed with your mark.  Please discuss this with your teacher.  You will be expected to demonstrate that you have done significant work/review in order to earn these opportunities.

Marked tests will be reviewed in class, but students will not be permitted to take them home.  If a student wishes to go over the test outside of class time, they may do so in the classroom only.