I have had a great first week of school and I really love all of my classes. I think that AP Calc will be one of my favorites because I have always loved math and I think this class will be challenging but also a lot of fun. The review packet has been a little bit of a wake up call that I need to study the things that we learned last year in Pre Calc. I do remember most of what is covered in the packet, but I don't think I would be ready or confident enough to take a test over the material yet. The topics that I think I need to review a little more are logarithms and asymptotes. Overall, most of the information is coming back to me pretty fast.
I think this class will be a lot more in depth then my previous math classes, and we will learn more about why things work the way they do rather than just how they work. In Mr. Mac's class, we used our calculators for almost everything. At the time, it seemed like a faster, more efficient way to complete math problems on homework and tests, but now I am wishing that we would have focused more on practicing how to do the problems by hand. I am going to try to challenge myself this year in AP Calc to do more problems without my calculator so that I can be prepared to do well on the no-calculator portion of the AP test at the end of the year.
One page in the Review Packet that I was confident working on was the Similar Triangles page. I like geometry and trig problems where you can see what you are trying to work out and how to work it out visually. If I ever have trouble with a math problem, it helps me a lot to draw a diagram. Drawing out the car/truck problem that we worked on the first day of school and breaking it into steps definitely helped me to see and think about the problem in a clearer way. It was much easier to see the best way to solve the problem after picturing the situation.
I am really excited for AP Calc this year and I am ready to work hard to prepare myself to do well on the AP test!
I think this class will be a lot more in depth then my previous math classes, and we will learn more about why things work the way they do rather than just how they work. In Mr. Mac's class, we used our calculators for almost everything. At the time, it seemed like a faster, more efficient way to complete math problems on homework and tests, but now I am wishing that we would have focused more on practicing how to do the problems by hand. I am going to try to challenge myself this year in AP Calc to do more problems without my calculator so that I can be prepared to do well on the no-calculator portion of the AP test at the end of the year.
One page in the Review Packet that I was confident working on was the Similar Triangles page. I like geometry and trig problems where you can see what you are trying to work out and how to work it out visually. If I ever have trouble with a math problem, it helps me a lot to draw a diagram. Drawing out the car/truck problem that we worked on the first day of school and breaking it into steps definitely helped me to see and think about the problem in a clearer way. It was much easier to see the best way to solve the problem after picturing the situation.
I am really excited for AP Calc this year and I am ready to work hard to prepare myself to do well on the AP test!