CALCULUS MEGA BUNDLE -- REVISED AUGUST 2021
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What educators are saying
Description
This MEGA BUNDLE contains 65 calculus circuits.
The chapters are as follows with the number of circuits in each chapter:
Precalculus Review (5)
Limits (3)
Derivatives (11)
Applications of Derivatives (9)
Integrals and Antiderivatives (13)
Differential Equations & Applications of the Integral (9)
Cal 1 Review & Mixed Topics (8)
Additional Topics (6)
What in the world is a mathematical circuit? It is a series of exercises, carefully strung together to maximize one’s time practicing. This bundle represents a body of work that I crafted over the course of 5+ years to meet the needs of my students and my friends’ students as well. Numerous colleagues supported this effort from editing my drafts to giving me ideas for new circuits. Several colleagues got bitten by the circuit bug and granted me permission to include their work in this bundle; you can see their names in the table of contents. Dozens of colleagues and hundreds of students helped by just showing their enthusiasm for my writing. This spirit buoyed me to keep writing more, and fine-tuning circuits that pushed practice to a new level.
The only way to get better at calculus, well, anything, is to do it. Recently I have started sewing and there are a lot of analogies I can draw between learning to sew and learning calculus. After two months, I can actually wind a bobbin and insert it in the right place to keep myself sewing until I get to my next lesson. This took some serious determination on my part, not to mention a lot of failed attempts. One must practice and struggle, figure it out, struggle some more, and keep moving forward in this halting “two steps forward one step back” manner. This is part of my rationale for Why I Don't Include Answer Keys. There is no learning without struggle. Calculus teachers must struggle too. Not only is it crucial for calculus teachers to work all of the problems their students work, the struggle of doing all of those problems and getting stuck and figuring it out and moving forward puts us in solidarity with our students. Kind of an “Us against the Machine” mentality. Does it mean we have to struggle in silence? H--- No! We need to reach out to friends for help. Look stuff up online. Watch videos. Whatever it takes. Then try it again on our own and see if we’ve “got it”. Even though I have taught calculus for the better part of three decades, when I am actively in school, I spend at least an hour per day (on average) working calculus problems. When I was a young teacher, it was more like at least 2.5 hours per day.
One final note… this improved bundle would be NOTHING without the help of several important people. First, Mark Kiraly, who was one of my earliest cheerleaders in this venture AND who helped me unmerge, reorganize, and remerge the original MEGA calculus bundle. Second, my husband and our two kids who let me write and do math instead of cook dinner, empty the dishwasher, clean the house, or do the laundry. Many people ask me how I ever found the time to write so many circuits, and my answer was, “Well, there are lots of things I don’t do, or don’t do regularly.”
Have fun working these problems – I know I do each time I rework them!
Virge
August 2023
