These courses develop facility in working with numbers, tables, equations, inequalities and graphs. The focus is on solving word problems and reading carefully, and thus the building of algebra skills stems from the need to solve problems in a context, rather than from drill and practice for its own sake. Students learn how to use the graphing calculator appropriately as an effective problem-solving tool. In addition, students may do a number of hands-on labs that require them to collect data, make conjectures and draw conclusions. Topics covered include equations and graphs that are linear and quadratic, distinguishing linear data from nonlinear data, inequalities, the basic rules of exponents, and other traditional Algebra I topics.