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Stephen Barbarossa has been teaching AP Calculus AB & BC at Kennedy Catholic High School in Burien, Washington since 2015. As a teacher, he is blessed to work with motivated students who are perseverant problem-solvers; and he enjoys using dialogue-heavy direct instruction, visualizations, and games and activities to help them develop an understanding of and appreciation for calculus.
For the past few years, Stephen has served as a College Board-endorsed AP Calculus workshop consultant; mentored new AP Calculus teachers; scored operational and international forms of the AP Calculus AB and BC exams; and presented sessions for calculus teachers at regional mathematics conferences. |
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Stephen can be contacted at barbarossas@kennedyhs.org
COURSE DESCRIPTION
During this four-day workshop, new and experienced instructors will acquire the strategies and pedagogical tools necessary to teach the AP Calculus BC course at their schools. Specifically, participants will explore the College Board’s Course and Exam Description for AP Calculus, AP Classroom and the suite of resources associated with it, the Instructional Planning Report, best practices for encouraging student engagement in the math classroom, and, most importantly, the actual content of the AP Calculus BC course. While some AB topics will be discussed, most of the time will be spent exploring topics that are covered only on the BC exam, including series and the calculus of parametric and polar curves. Participants will also gain a better understanding of the AP Calculus BC exam as they delve into its structure, the manifold ways it assesses students’ skills and content knowledge, and the detailed scoring rubrics the College Board develops to ensure students’ free-response solutions are graded fairly and consistently. Participants will have the opportunity to discuss the teaching of calculus; and they will be given time to collaborate as they plan and pace their course, scaffold the content, spiral review into their instructional agendas, and identify equity strategies they can employ to ensure their course is accessible to all students who are prepared for calculus. Educators will leave the workshop with a plethora of classroom-ready resources – including guided notes pages, worksheets, games, activities, demonstrations, and assessments – they can use when they themselves teach the AP Calculus BC course.
Tentative Agenda
The schedule below is tentative and subject to revision.
Day One
During this four-day workshop, new and experienced instructors will acquire the strategies and pedagogical tools necessary to teach the AP Calculus BC course at their schools. Specifically, participants will explore the College Board’s Course and Exam Description for AP Calculus, AP Classroom and the suite of resources associated with it, the Instructional Planning Report, best practices for encouraging student engagement in the math classroom, and, most importantly, the actual content of the AP Calculus BC course. While some AB topics will be discussed, most of the time will be spent exploring topics that are covered only on the BC exam, including series and the calculus of parametric and polar curves. Participants will also gain a better understanding of the AP Calculus BC exam as they delve into its structure, the manifold ways it assesses students’ skills and content knowledge, and the detailed scoring rubrics the College Board develops to ensure students’ free-response solutions are graded fairly and consistently. Participants will have the opportunity to discuss the teaching of calculus; and they will be given time to collaborate as they plan and pace their course, scaffold the content, spiral review into their instructional agendas, and identify equity strategies they can employ to ensure their course is accessible to all students who are prepared for calculus. Educators will leave the workshop with a plethora of classroom-ready resources – including guided notes pages, worksheets, games, activities, demonstrations, and assessments – they can use when they themselves teach the AP Calculus BC course.
Tentative Agenda
The schedule below is tentative and subject to revision.
Day One
- Course and Exam Description / Planning the AP Course
· Welcome and goals brainstorm
· Introduction to the Course and Exam Description
· Registering for the AP exam
· Introduction to AP Classroom’s Question Bank
· AP exam sections, timing, and calculator policies
· Planning the first three weeks of the course
· Participant’s questions and comments
Calculus Topics
· Improper integrals
· Sequences of partial sums
· Introducing series and tests for their divergence and convergence
- Course and Exam Description / Planning the AP Course
· Exploring the CED
· Modifying released FRQs for use in the classroom
· Spiraling AB review into the BC course
· Equity strategies
· Using AP Classroom, AP Central, and textbooks to develop assessments
· Time to discuss participants’ thoughts, questions, and comments
Calculus Topics
· The calculus of parametric curves and vector-valued functions
· BC integration techniques
· Arc length
· Taylor and Maclaurin series
- Course and Exam Description / Planning the AP Course
· Routine textbook questions versus AP exam questions
· Using College Board rubrics to score samples of student work
· Time to incorporate learned instructional strategies into a lesson plan
· Time to discuss participants’ thoughts, questions, and comments
Calculus Topics
· The calculus of polar curves
· More convergence tests (p-series, limit comparison test, ratio test)
· Euler’s method
· Logistic differential equations
Day Four - Course and Exam Description / Planning the AP Course
· AP exam scoring rubrics and notes
· Reviewing for the AP exam
· Instructional Planning Report
· AP Course Audit
· A closer look at the 2023 AP exam FRQs
Calculus Topics
· Absolute and conditional convergence
· Power series
· Radius and interval of convergence
· Error bounds - wrap up