Calc Medic Blog
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Discover new lessons, education discussion, and answers to frequently asked Calc questions. As calculus teachers ourselves, we understand the difficulty of engaging students with exciting and relevant content. Calc Medic offers the teaching resources you need to get your students collaborating and communicating about calculus in a way that leads to deep conceptual understanding.
Calc Medic Blog
6d ago
One of the key differences between AP Precalculus and a traditional Precalculus course is its focus on modeling. Students will be asked to write equations that represent contextual, scenarios, certain function characteristics, or data sets. The three types of modeling students will be asked to do are:
Deterministic: the question gives all the information needed and there is one correct answer. (Ex: Write an equation that models the number of bacteria for a population that initially has 7 bacteria and triples every week. Or, write an equation for a function that has shifted three units to the ..read more
Calc Medic Blog
6d ago
I've always wanted to give a test to students that was just a blank piece of paper and they would get to tell me everything they know about a given unit of the course. I liked the idea of them getting to show me what they did understand, rather than what they didn't. Logistically, I knew this probably wasn't going to work as an actual assessment. But I started thinking more about how we could structure a task where students would have just enough of a prompt to get their gears turning, but then full control and creativity over what and how they demonstrate what they've learned. This is how the ..read more
Calc Medic Blog
6d ago
Modeling is one of the big themes of the AP Precalculus course. A subskill of this larger category is being able to write an equation that passes through particular points. Students focus on this particularly with linear and exponential functions, since these functions have the unique property that just two ordered pairs determine the equation.
Now that students are at the end of the course and have familiarity with all the function types, why not up the ante? In the Chili Pepper Function Challenge students are given two points on the coordinate plane, and each challenge asks them for so ..read more
Calc Medic Blog
6d ago
When I took AP Calculus in high school, my teacher (Mrs. Triezenberg, she was a legend!) had us create "gold sheets" which were a two-column study tool to help us remember all the key content of the course. You can imagine that many, many entries were dedicated to derivative and antiderivative rules. And for good reason! Students who are fluent at finding derivatives and antiderivatives can free up working memory, allowing them to focus their cognitive resources on more challenging aspects of the exam.
,,Flashcards are a great way for students to practice these rules when they're studying on t ..read more
Calc Medic Blog
6d ago
There are some things AP Precalculus students will need to know cold for the exam. These are things like unit circle values, exponent properties, evaluating basic log expressions, and trig identities. We don’t want students to have to spend a ton of time trying to remind themselves of how these things work in the middle of the exam. Their cognitive energy should be dedicated to harder and more thought-provoking questions.
To make sure students have the basics down pat, we love playing “I Have, Who Has?” with our students.
Instructions
Print one classroom set of the “I Have, Who Has?” car ..read more
Calc Medic Blog
2w ago
Students often ask us if we have a “study guide” for different units or even the entire course. Traditionally, we have deferred and told them they can find everything they need in the completed lessons (which is entirely true)! But we also know that not all of our students keep their lessons neat and organized. Even if they did, the number of activities can be overwhelming–and they often find they only need quick reminders of each lesson instead of an in-depth review of the entire activity. When we asked students what they look at the most for studying, they overwhelmingly say the QuickNotes&n ..read more
Calc Medic Blog
1M ago
Productive struggle is probably one of the leading buzzwords in education. (I have seen multiple “The Productive Struggle is Real” conference sessions at NCTM.) Growth mindset! Grit! I’ll keep trying! Mistakes help me learn! While I support all of these messages, they start to sound empty after a while. These are things that need to be fleshed out and embodied, not just written on posters. So how do we do that?
We have to start by becoming crystal clear about what we mean by productive struggle, how it differs from unproductive struggle, and why productive struggle is critical for helping stud ..read more
Calc Medic Blog
2M ago
The Calc Medic AP Precalculus Exam Review Course launches February 1st, and the countdown to the first-ever AP Precalculus Exam begins! This review course features:
25+ instructional videos reviewing the entire AP Precalculus curriculum, following the College Board CED
Guided student notes to go with every video
Strategy videos for tackling every FRQ on the AP Precalculus Exam
AP Exam Tips that will help your students maximize their score
Practice multiple choice questions for each unit, with immediate feedback
Practice free response questions for each unit following one of the four task mode ..read more
Calc Medic Blog
2M ago
In this season of Golden Globes and Oscars, it is natural to think about the movies we’ve seen in the past year and to create our own ranking of what should win the prize for being the best. But why not turn that reflection to my own AP Precalculus class and the activities we’ve done over the past semester? When I first decided to transition my traditional precalculus course to the new AP Precalculus, I knew that I would need a set of resources that would encourage good communication and deep thinking. Naturally, the new Calc Medic lessons were my first choice since I had been using the EFFL a ..read more
Calc Medic Blog
2M ago
As a mathematics educator, I care deeply about the work that I do and am passionate about creating positive experiences for students in math class. When I tell other people about my work, I often hear a very similar set of responses, many of which are based on deeply rooted math myths. Since holiday parties are often not the time and place for impassioned soliloquies, I’ve decided to save my thoughts for this blog post. Here are 5 of the most common myths about mathematics:
1. Some people just don’t have the math gene.
I cannot tell you how many conversations I’ve had where upon hearing what w ..read more