By the end of the second term, we had taken AP calculus for a whole academic year. Despite numerous challenges, all students tried their best to achieve the satisfying scores they deserved during the learning process.
AP Calculus is one of the two advanced placement calculus courses offered by The College Board. Since much of the knowledge involved is relevant to university study, it is challenging for students to take this course in high school. As the course is based on pre-calculus12 knowledge that we only learn in this senior year, it is necessary to prepare for it in advance. Compared with ordinary senior courses this year, the pace of AP courses is also much faster, which emphasizes the importance of preview.
This year, Ms. Liu is in charge of our AP calculus course. As a teacher who has worked in our school for years, Ms. Liu’s teaching ability and teaching methods have been praised by lots of students. Being a student of Ms. Liu for two years, I am also quite happy about the arrangement because we are familiar with her teaching style. Besides that, Ms. Liu’s coursework is indeed clear. The classification between units is very obvious, which is quite helpful for both previews before classes and reviews afterward. In addition, in the teaching process, Ms. Liu sometimes adjusts the learning order between chapters to help us understand further.
Now we have carried on the course for two semesters, learning Limits, Derivatives, and so on. In my opinion, this course is as hard as we expect, but there are still many students who get high marks. By inquiring and reflecting, I summarize some practical methods to learn this course. The first thing is to pay attention to the preparation of each class. This course involves a lot of new knowledge, so having a solid foundation of knowledge is very important. For instance, many students choose to self-study in the summer, which helps them adapt to the high pace of the course later. Secondly, clearing the connection between chapters is also crucial — new chapters are based on the old ones, so only by laying a good foundation from the beginning can we learn the later ones more efficiently. Finally, review after learning each chapter is also essential. It can not only make the learning of follow-up chapters easier but also let the end of the semester review become less stressful.
In a word, AP calculus is very useful for our later studies, and this course also helps high school students to get familiar with college courses in advance. Although this course is difficult, we can certainly get good grades as long as we use the correct learning methods and keep practicing!