Private AP Calculus Course
In this private AP Calculus course designed for high school seniors we’ll dive deeply into all facets of calculus, all the while preparing for the AP calculus AB exam. This is designed as an introductory college-level calculus course, with a focus on the most challenging problems from differential and integral calculus. It is taught privately as a one-on-one course with the teacher, remotely.
Problem Solving
The student in this course will use problem-solving strategies, questioning, investigating, analyzing critically, gathering and constructing evidence, and communicating rigorous arguments justifying their thinking while we tackle the big ideas of calculus, including: limits, derivatives, integrals and the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus, and series. We will generally use a combination of the investigative, low-floor-high-ceiling curriculum CPM in conjunction with personalized projects and goals of the student and their family.
How this Course is Organized
This is a private AP calculus course. We strive to meet twice weekly for about an hour total over video. We begin the week with a live session where we work in tandem on some problem from calculus that embodies a new concept for us to investigate. Over the course of the week the student spends about an hour per day on their own working on assignments that require filling whiteboards, making slides of learning, identifying confusions, and Slacking/WhatsApping/emailing the teacher with questions. In our second session we come back together live for an hour where we go through confusing problems together on a virtual whiteboard, capture our learning for the week, get on mathematical tangents, and find connections between our work and the world.
How We Track Learning
- Each week we create a “slide of learning” where we capture the student’s work from that week alongside notes, quotes, learnings, goals, and feedback for me.
- As part of the course, the student is required to talk to a family member every week about something they’ve learned.
- I assess and give feedback weekly to the student.
- The student prepares and delivers a Presentation of Learning at the end of the course.
- Assessment fits the student’s goals.
- And, of course, at the very end there is the AP Exam, which we’ve prepped for along the way.
