FRQ Practice Ideas for Next Year
It’s that time of year again…my seniors have gone, I find myself with a bit more unstructured time during the school day, and my mind is flooded with ideas to try for next year and things to improve. I typically use my increased free time to look up ideas, read math blogs, and brainstorm alternate approaches, and I always find this process exciting and hopeful. Here is one of my AP Calculus goals for next year.
Rediscovered Diff. Eq. application problems + Seniors’ final days
There are only two days left with our wonderful seniors: Class of 2024! Their final exam projects are wrapping up and final grades are almost done. I also just came across two great Differential Equations applications problems that I had saved years ago and lost track of.
A Very Relevant WSJ Article on Worldwide Population Crisis
Today I got home from work after doing a population versus food supply problem with my students, and I found this article as I was reading through the WSJ newspaper. SO relevant, interesting, and thought-provoking! Definitely bringing it into class to share.
Castle Attack: Final AP Calculus Review Game
After years of intending to try this easy-to-use game, I finally used to today in AP Calculus and it went really well! In this post, I describe how I set up the game, how I will improve it for future use, and share the problems I used.
The FINAL AP Calculus lesson: Sigma <--> Integral notation
Once we reach the end of the year in AP Calculus BC and ALL content has been covered, I circle back to the beginning of Unit 6 and spend one class period focusing more on how to convert from sigma notation to integral notation. This is a great review of proper notation, limits, and Riemann sums. In this post, I share the resources that I use to help students master the technical notation.
A Polar Prom
Commentary on our seniors’ final weeks, including information on our school’s prom and discussion on how I introduced and taught polar functions in AP Calculus BC.
More Radicals - Dealing with Extraneous Solutions
In this post, I discuss how I introduce extraneous solutions and how I have students explore them more with graphing calculators (although Desmos could be used as well). Resources are included.
Find Your Radical Error
A couple weeks ago, I gave my students a worksheet on things related to radicals. As I went through the sheets, I noticed a LOT of common errors; errors that I knew they shouldn’t be making. It could have been due to carelessness or rushing in some cases, but either way I wanted an effective way to address the errors. I decided to create a “Fix the Error” worksheet based directly on the errors I saw. Here is the original problem set and the “Find Your Error” worksheet, which worked out really well in class!
Polynomial Application Problems
Here are two of my favorite sets of Polynomial problems to be done at Vertical Whiteboards (VNPS). Each sets takes about two class periods.
Some u-sub stuff I love
I share some of my favorite activities and problem sets that I use with my students to help them master this important method of integration. YOU can do U-sub!
Building Cross-Sectional Volumes
My favorite way to help Calculus students visualize cross-sectional volumes is with PIPE CLEANERS!
How I Introduce Volumes of Revolution
In this post, I describe what the critical first day of volumes looks like in my classroom and how I use various techniques to help my student conceptually understand how to use calculus to find those volumes.
Rethinking Logarithms
Due to Covid and Covid learning gaps, I am teaching logarithms in Algebra II for the first time since in three years and I am excited to finally get to this important concept!