The new 2019 AP Calculus AB and BC Course and Exam Description is now available. New and experienced AP Calculus teachers should download a copy and read it carefully. (A paper copy with binder can be ordered here – it’s FREE.)

The main sections of the book are here with notes on each.

Part 1: General information about the program

• About AP
• AP Resources including a preview of the online AP Classroom opening on August 1, 2019
• Prerequisites (p. 7)
  • 4 years of math high school before AP
  • Study of Elementary functions, and the language and properties of function in general
  • Students who take AP Calculus BC should have basic familiarity with sequences and series, as well as some exposure to parametric and polar equations. This is new and indicates that students should not be seeing sequences, series, parametric equation, vector equation, and polar equation for the first time in their BC course.

Part 2: The course framework

• The revised Mathematical Practices. The practices have been reorganized into 4 categories with detail under each (p. 14).While written with the calculus in mind, these really apply to all mathematics courses. They make a good topic for several of your department or Math Vertical team meetings. Make a copy for your students and your colleagues.
  • Implementing Mathematical Processes
  • Connecting Representations
  • Justification
  • Communication and Notation
• The course content.
  • • The big ideas have been reorganized into three ideas.
      • Change
      • Limits
      • Analysis of Functions
    • In addition to the organization of the course content into 10 units there is information about how much of the exams test each unit, how to spiral the big ideas.
  • • The online AP Classroom available on August 1, 2019 will include “Personal Progress Checks” with which each student can determine how well he or she has mastered the units.
  • • Unit Guides: These guides serve almost as the lesson plans for the year and will certainly help in preparing your syllabus. This is the longest section.
      • • Each of the 10 units breaks the required course content giving the Enduring Understandings (EU), Learning Objectives (LO), and Essential Knowledge (EK) for each topic.
        • There are 6 – 15 topics in each unit.
        • Each unit begins with a paragraph on Developing Understanding, Building the Mathematical Practices, and Preparing for the AP Exam.
        • Sample instruction activates list activities for instruction for each topic in the unit.
        • In the sidebars are link to other resources.

Part 3: Instructional Approaches

• Notes on textbooks, calculators, and professional organizations.
• Instructional strategies – an outline of dozens of strategies you can use in your class. Each is defined and explained briefly.
• Developing the Mathematical Practices – this section identifies skills, sample key questions, activities and instructional strategies for each
• Exam Overview – gives information on the exams, how topics are weighted, how each unit is weighted, how the learning is assessed etc.
• A list of “task verbs” given the meaning of the task students are asked to do on the free-response questions. This should be very helpful. Make a copy for your students. (p. 227)
• Sample multiple-choice and free response questions with answers. Each is indexed to unit and LO to give you an idea of how each LO can be tested.

I have written a correlation between the topics in each unit and my blog posts. This can be found under the “Topics” tab in the menu bar at the top of the page (see figure below). The blog posts, written over the past 7 years, do not align perfectly with the topics and units. There are some posts that apply to several topics and some topics with (alas) no posts. I will update these with new posts from time to time and add any posts I’ve overlooked. I hope this will help you find your way around.

As always, I appreciate any feedback, suggestions, corrections etc.