I'm doing it at my local university, I'm kinda old and I have pretty bad depression so I'm behind, but basically we started with the word tables sounding them out we also learned the tones in the first lesson. Then we get about 30 vocabulary words each week to learn often those build upon words we already learned like 学 and then we would learn 学习, and we would learn different grammar concepts we have language labs where we exclusively practice pronunciation and reading. Also learning how to use a Chinese dictionary that's what we did the first semester so far.