<p>Just curious here- I wanted to compare, on a national level, where student's are in their Calc. AB class. Right now, we're using Larson (8th) and we're on Chap. 3.6.</p>
<p>Where are you guys at right now?</p>
<p>Wiley’s 3.7 of 7 - derivatives of implicit functions.</p>
<p>Our school’s Calc AB class uses FDWK, and they’ve just started Chapter 4 with applications of the derivative.</p>
<p>Our school starts the week before Labor Day, which might be important info in comparing where folks are at.</p>
<p>Right now, from what I know (my sister is in Calculus AB/AP right now), my school’s Calculus AB/AP classes are on integrals now (and likely heading into applications of integrals). </p>
<p>On an unrelated note…TheMathProf just came out of nowhere. =O</p>
<p>Huh? :)</p>
<p>Your sister’s AP Calc AB class is going really fast. My BC class isn’t even to applications of integrals yet. We’re wrapping up Chapter 5 of the Larson text (I think we’re using the 6th edition) this week, and then move into applications of integrals from there.</p>
<p>@TheMathProf: I didn’t know you were teaching a full year AP Calculus BC class. O.o</p>
<p>The book that my school’s AP Calculus class uses (AB and BC) is Thomas’ Calculus: Early Transcendentals, 11th Edition</p>
<p>At my school, the Calculus AB curriculum moves very fast. Students spend 2 months learning derivatives and learning the applications. By November, they move on to integrals and its applications. This takes another 2-3 months or so. They are now learning position, velocity, and acceleration. </p>
<p>However, they are about to get their first taste of AP-style questions. They will be assigned practice packets to do during Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday periods. (I’m also required to do the packets as a BC student, but the difference is that it has BC topics that I have learned up to that point 
)</p>
<p>Practicing for the AP exams - for the AB class - start in February, when they start seeing what an AP exam looks like (how MC questions are worded, nature of free response, etc). However, amidst the prepping period in the few months before the AP exam, they will be learning the little things that is found in the AP exam. It includes estimating derivatives, piecewise integrals, linear approximation, total distance, definite integrals with geometric area, average values, accumulation function, table approximation, and whatever else I’m missing here. </p>
<p>March and April is full-on practice for the AP exams for the AB class. I still remember going through that period, and boy it was hectic. =P</p>
<p>If you want to know my BC curriculum, PM me. :)</p>
<p>Critical numbers</p>
<p>WillDaSnail- Wow, you guys are ahead! My teacher (the only one teaching Calc. AB in our school) is also going to start going over AP material in the Jan/Feb- by that time most students will have enough knowledge to really start doing AP problems.</p>
<p>Second year doing a full year AP Calculus BC class; that’s the only way we do it at our school. None of this messing around with taking AB and then BC.</p>
<p>The BC class is crying about how fast we’re going. We’re just finishing Chapter 5 of Larson on derivative and antiderivative rules for logarithms, exponential functions, inverse functions, and separable differential equations. But this is the pace we’ve got to have just to start reviewing in early March.</p>
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<p>Maybe give your class a pep talk about how other AP Calc classes around the nation (especially AB) are already ahead, lol. :P</p>
<p>And there are some benefits with taking AB first year, then BC second year. That’s what I did :P</p>
<p>We’ve got this one ridiculously fast AB teacher who’s almost ahead of us, but everybody knows this, so I decided against it. :)</p>
<p>They’ll do fine, but a couple of kids took on more than they were willing to work for. Happens every year; there’s just more of them this year because enrollment in BC jumped by 50%.</p>
<p>Our school used to do AB followed by BC as a requirement. It’s certainly a more humane way to do it given the nature of our precalculus class.</p>
<p>We’ve started differentiation rates.</p>
<p>AB- Starting Integrals next week.</p>
<p>AB, we just started integration this week.</p>
<p>Taking the final this week, but we just did some U-substitution and Fundamental Theorem of Calculus last week.</p>
<p>AB: We just started integration today.</p>
<p>Larson’s 8th edition, we just finished related rates before this break started. My teacher is doing this curriculum in a weird order though. We’ve done implicit, curve sketching (using concavity, increase/decrease, etc), and probably some other stuff that I cant think of lol</p>
<p>We got started on Integration before the break. We’ll finish that in the next couple weeks.</p>
<p>@tb0mb93: Most of the other calc textbooks that I’ve seen cover the curve sketching prior to doing related rates and optimization. Larsen’s the only book I’ve seen that covers related rates in the same chapter as the basic derivative rules chapter. It’s also the only book I’ve seen that covers derivatives and antiderivatives of exponential, logarithmic, and inverse-trig functions in their own separate chapter.</p>
<p>TheMathProf:
Just curious, how popular is Larson? I’m using Larson and I think it’s pretty good- are the books just the same too?</p>