I have received many messages and emails from math teachers who have recently learned they will be starting the school year online. I want to share my experiences and the resources I’ve built over the years, as both a flipped classroom and purely online AP Calculus AB teacher.
I have been teaching AP Calculus AB since 2008. I began flipping my AP Calculus classes in 2010 and have taught that class in a purely online format for three years. I have also flipped my Honors Algebra 2 class.
For any teacher who will benefit from it, I wanted to share my full AP Calculus AB course, complete with:
- videos for each unit covered in the AP Calculus curriculum
- find a link to videos, by chapter, at the top right corner of each main unit page
- my calendar & pacing
- the “chapter assignments” block on each main unit page will show what students were tasked with for each chapter
- all assignments, including quiz & test review plus Flipgrid activities
- you’ll find PDFs to worksheets, answer keys, and more on each main unit page and on the unit subpages
I will also share my YouTube playlists, which includes videos spanning the full AP Calculus AB and Honors Algebra 2 curriculums:
I am providing all of these resources completely free. You are welcome to use any of the content I share here in your classroom.
I would greatly appreciate it if you considered checking out my book, Tech with Heart, which will walk you through my teaching philosophy and provide guidelines on how I run my courses. The content itself isn’t magical. The way that we deliver the content is. By reading my book, you will gain an understanding of how I run my class and how I leverage tech tools such as Flipgrid, Edpuzzle, and Pear Deck to build deeper relationships with my students, provide all students an opportunity to have their voice heard, and to get intimate insight into their needs.
If you are interested in making a bulk book order purchase for your school, discounts are available.
If there is anything I can do to support you or a teacher you work with, please don’t hesitate to reach out! I know how stressful this time is for everyone, and I would like to be able to share in any way that I can.
techieMusings 
Thank you for sharing your Flipped Calculus Class; I am a member of the AP Calculus Facebook group and read your comment while searching for ideas for this coming fall semester of the new school year.
When viewing your course, I cannot find where you are linking the guided notes PDF files where students are writing notes from the videos you are having them watch. Also, I cannot find where you are having students partake in Edpuzzle; I would love to view how you are using the Edpuzzle tool for Calculus so I can use it effectively for my Algebra 2/Integrated Math 3 class I teach.
Finally, when students are using Flipgrid to demonstrate solving an exercise, how do they usually show the work? Do they use their cell phone’s video recording app to record what they are writing and then somehow upload that video to Flipgrid? If not, will you please let me know how students are giving you feedback using that tool?
Thank you for your time in addressing my questions.
Cheers,
Steve
Hi Steve,
I don’t have the guided notes publicly available, so that’s why you’re not seeing them. Basically, they are the same as what you see me writing on in the video itself. I changed all of the Edpuzzle links to the YouTube videos themselves in order to share publicly (otherwise, the Edpuzzle’s were just assigned to my students). But here is an example of what it looks like in Edpuzzle: https://edpuzzle.com/media/5bfc89fa19d2c3405237f229
For the Flipgrid, I simply have students hover their phone over their handwritten work. Here is a blog where I talk more about the process: https://blog.flipgrid.com/news/2017/3/3/using-flipgrid-in-online-apcalculus-to-allow-students-to-verbalize-their-thinking-process. Here is a student exemplar: https://flipgrid.com/s/4af9c16fdff2
I hope that helps!
Stacey
What textbook did you use? That you assigned problems from?
I used Stewart’s Calculus: Concepts & Contexts
Stacey,
Thank you for your continued generosity and willingness to share. I have followed you for some time on Twitter and purchased and read your book Tech with Heart last summer (and plan to read it again before we start up again in late August). I got a lot out of your story and have worked to implement some of your practices into my Hybrid-Online Precalculus course as well as some of my other face-to-face courses that I teach.
This fall, my school district will be starting 100% online. While I feel comfortable delivering instruction and using various formative assessment tools in an online setting, I am still trying to fully wrap my head around the best approach to delivering assessments online. I am teaching AP Calculus AB for the second year this upcoming year and was curious how you give your students more “summative” assessments, like your unit tests and quizzes, in the fully online format? For tests and quizzes in your fully online AP Calculus class, do your students generally take them online or do they have a time to come into a classroom setting to take them with you (currently, this is not an option for us)?
Thank you again for all that you share. I look forward to hearing from you.
Aaron
Hi Aaron,
I’m glad to be able to share! I am so happy to hear that you enjoyed Tech with Heart and have been able to apply some of those ideas in your classroom :)
I don’t have any great answers for assessment. I feel very stuck here, too, particularly in AP. In my online class, students needed to take their assessments in a monitored learning center on campus. In the spring, when we moved to remote learning, I kept with fairly traditional assessments and had students take their test while on a Google Meet. It was not ideal. I think I will more heavily weight some of the Flipgrid math solutions in this year ahead. I’ll probably start by making the rubric rather simple and reward talking through the process most heavily, but as we move forward, I will tighten up the standards for what a detailed solution means. I’ve always found that, in assessing the Flipgrid’s, I get the best sense of how well a student understands a concept. However, the Flipgrid’s are time intensive (it takes more time for a student to record a Flipgrid solution than to just solve a question on a traditional assessment… and, it takes much longer to grade!).
I’m sorry I don’t have great answers here! It’s great to be able to chat things out, though, as so many of us are asking the same questions!
Yes, last year I was in a very similar situation with regard to how I implemented assessments after we were no longer on campus. I have used Flipgrid (similar to how you do in your AP Calculus AB class) for an assessment and got great work from my students and a great sense of how well they understood the topics (as you said). However, as you said, they are time consuming for both the teacher and students.
I appreciate you taking the time to reply and sharing your ideas. I am hoping I dig deep into the creative corners of my mind to find some additional ways to assess my students that are less time intensive, because I am working toward flipping my AP Calculus AB course for this upcoming year! I have always wanted to try this, and after teaching the course last year (and being re-inspired by your book) I think it is something that will afford my students better learning opportunities.
Thanks again for all that you share.
Stacy, so grateful for your selfless support of calculus teachers out there! What a kind gesture to share out so many resources! You are a true educator!
Thank you for your kind comment! I’m so happy to be able to share :)
HI, Do you you teach AP Calculus as a Flipped Classroom in in person instruction? My daughters school implemented this during covid/virtual. And have continued this style for the new year 2021/2022 for the students now that that are in person.
Tests and quizzes are being administered via AP classroom and many students are not performing well at all. The feedback I’m getting is flipped teaches the concepts, but doesn’t at the level the students need to really grasp the concept. I’m curious on your perspective as we just don’t understand why teaching isn’t being done in class by the teacher. Thanks!
Thanks for reaching out. I have been flipping my AP Calculus class since 2010. The flipped model has worked incredibly well for me and my students, but a lot of time and development has gone into my flipped model. I believe that the most important learning happens *in the classroom*; with the flipped format, I am able to better make class time revolve around student needs. My flipped classroom reduced anxiety about homework, opened up time and space for collaboration in the classroom, and gave me the chance to address both full class and individual student needs more effectively and efficiently. I have a video where I share more about my approach to the flipped classroom: https://youtu.be/MdyBP1VW68Q. To me, it is not at all about kids learning content at home; rather, I’ve found a way to make the learning that happens in class more impactful and student-centered. My book, Tech with Heart: Leveraging Technology to Empower Student Voice, Ease Anxiety, & Create Compassionate Classrooms (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1949595285/), also talks in great detail about how my flipped classroom has evolved over the years. I’m just sharing that in case the school is doing any professional development on the topic and would be interested in that.
Thank you for being an involved parent looking to help your daughter maximize her learning and experience in math class! I hope that my response is helpful, and please feel free to reach out anytime.
Thank you for that feedback! As I dig further into this, I suspect their time in the classroom isn’t being utilized as in depth as it could be. The students are learning from the lessons on the flipped math website. When they go to class (every other day schedule) they put their questions on a form from the lesson they learned at home. The teacher reviews the questions with the class. It is interactive and students participate. Then the students go to AP Classroom and do a 2 to 4 or 5 question ‘check your understanding’. By that time class is about over, Students can ask the teacher individually or they just try to figure it out themselves. What we are seeing is when they take the test or quiz on AP classroom, they are not performing as if they have mastered the concepts.
So it is giving the perception that flipped math isn’t working. When really I suspect there are missing pieces to the curriculum when the students enter into the classroom to the test/quiz time.
I’m interested in your AP Calculus Flipped full course but the link no longer works. Are you not sharing this resource anymore?
Hi Becki – unfortunately, the LMS I was using was discontinued and with it went my course 😔 I am not currently teaching AP Calculus, so I just haven’t re-built the course in another LMS otherwise I would share. All of my videos are still available on YouTube if you’re interested in checking any of those out (organized by playlist): https://www.youtube.com/@StaceyRoshan/playlists. Sorry not to be able to share more.
I totally understand. I checked out the videos and they will be very helpful. Thank you!