Online AP Calculus focuses on students’ understanding of calculus concepts and provides experience with methods and applications. Through the use of big ideas of calculus (e.g., modeling change, approximation and limits, and analysis of functions), each course becomes a cohesive whole, rather than a collection of unrelated topics. The courses require students to use definitions and theorems to build arguments and justify conclusions and features a multi-representational approach to calculus, with concepts, results, and problems expressed graphically, numerically, analytically, and verbally. Exploring connections among these representations builds understanding of how calculus applies limits to develop important ideas, definitions, formulas, and theorems. A sustained emphasis on clear communication of methods, reasoning, justifications, and conclusions is essential. Teachers and students should regularly use technology to reinforce relationships among functions, to confirm written work, to implement experimentation, and to assist in interpreting results.
Required resources: TI-83 or TI-83 Plus calculator. Read “Getting Started” and Chapter 1 in the TI Guidebook before your course starts.
