<p>Hey,</p>
<p>So I was really excited to take AP Calc AB this year. Our school does not normally offer it, but because another girl and I requested it, they sent one of the math teachers to AP training and poof, there it was. However, now it is starting to take a turn for the worse.</p>
<p>As a new teacher, ours is, to be frank, kind of an idiot. I am not sure if we are following a quick enough pace and if our homework is truly helping us prepare for the exam. Our teacher assigns every problem for each section in our textbook, and I feel that is the reason we may be so behind. It is not that I have a problem with heavy homework, but it is getting kind of repetitious, spending three days to a week on one section with 70 problems. Could some of you tell me what you're currently learning and how your teacher assigns homework? I may try to self study this winter break to get a little ahead if I need to. </p>
<p>Thanks so much.</p>
<p>One thing that will help in the conversation is what book you are using. With that information (include the edition number), we can tell you what sections are covered on the exam, and from there, you can get an idea of whether you’re far enough along yet.</p>
<p>To give you a rough idea, our AP Calc AB classes at my school are hitting the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus next week using the FDWK (Finney Demana Waits Kennedy) book (I don’t know the edition number, it’s the one before the AP edition).</p>
<p>We use that book too. Edition 3. Le sigh; we just finished chapter three. You’re two chapters ahead. It was ridiculous how slow the teacher paced us. I can say I have done every single problem in each section.</p>
<p>Do you do the problems from the sections? If so, how many? Like I said, I think that is the reason behind our lack of progress. We just spend too much time on each section and going over EVERY problem.</p>
<p>I’m in the BC class at my school, but the AB class was doing related rates early this week, which is the end of chapter 4, I think, of the AP edition.</p>
<p>It’s been awhile since I’ve taught from that book, but by the time you get to the AB exam, you’ll need to have covered Chapter 4 (except for 4.5), Chapter 5, Chapter 6 (except for 6.3, and you can get away with skipping 6.5 and 6.6), and Chapter 7 (except for the shell method in section 7.3, as well as sections 7.4 and 7.5). I’d also recommend looking at section 8.2.</p>
<p>In a typical section, I’d say we probably did about half the assignment problems, which works out to be in the neighborhood of 20-25 exercises. For most sections, that was one night’s homework, although for some sections spending more time is warranted (for instance, for related rates and for optimization in Chapter 4).</p>
<p>Thank you guys for the responses! I really appreciate it, and it looks like in order to try to do somewhat decent on the AP, I will have to self-study or try to talk to my teacher. She gave us an AP exam for our final but needless to say, with the lack of preparation and hardly any material covered, it was a disaster. </p>
<p>Is it a good idea to talk to my teacher or principal about this? I am really worried.</p>