Important Updates
AP Daily and AP Classroom
Short, searchable AP Daily videos can be assigned alongside topic questions to help you cover all course content, skills, and task models, and check student understanding. Unlock progress checks so students can demonstrate their knowledge and skills unit by unit and use My Reports to highlight progress and additional areas for support.
Course Overview
AP Calculus AB is an introductory college-level calculus course. Students cultivate their understanding of differential and integral calculus through engaging with real-world problems represented graphically, numerically, analytically, and verbally and using definitions and theorems to build arguments and justify conclusions as they explore concepts like change, limits, and the analysis of functions.
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AP Calculus AB Course Overview
This resource provides a succinct description of the course and exam.
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AP Calculus Course at a Glance
Excerpted from the AP Calculus AB and BC Course and Exam Description, the Course at a Glance document outlines the topics and skills covered in the AP Calculus courses, along with suggestions for sequencing.
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AP Calculus AB and BC Course and Exam Description
This is the core document for this course. Unit guides clearly lay out the course content and skills and recommend sequencing and pacing for them throughout the year. The CED was updated in the summer of 2020 to include scoring guidelines for the example questions.
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AP Calculus AB and BC CED Errata Sheet
This document details the updates made to the course and exam description (CED) in September 2019. It includes printable copies of the updated pages, which can be used as replacement sheets in your CED binder. Note: It does not include the scoring guidelines, which were added to the online CED in the summer of 2020.
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AP Calculus AB and BC CED Scoring Guidelines
This document details how each of the sample free-response questions in the course and exam description (CED) would be scored. This information is now in the online CED but was not included in the binders teachers received in 2019.
Course Content
Based on the Understanding by Design® (Wiggins and McTighe) model, this course framework provides a clear and detailed description of the course requirements necessary for student success. The framework specifies what students must know, be able to do, and understand, with a focus on big ideas that encompass core principles, theories, and processes of the discipline. The framework also encourages instruction that prepares students for advanced coursework in mathematics or other fields engaged in modeling change (e.g., pure sciences, engineering, or economics) and for creating useful, reasonable solutions to problems encountered in an ever-changing world.
The AP Calculus AB framework is organized into eight commonly taught units of study that provide one possible sequence for the course. As always, you have the flexibility to organize the course content as you like.
Mathematical Practices
The AP Calculus AB framework included in the course and exam description outlines distinct skills, called Mathematical Practices, that students should practice throughout the year—skills that will help them learn to think and act like mathematicians.
AP and Higher Education
Higher education professionals play a key role developing AP courses and exams, setting credit and placement policies, and scoring student work. The AP Higher Education site features information on recruitment and admission, advising and placement, and more.
This chart shows recommended scores for granting credit, and how much credit should be awarded, for each AP course. Your students can look up credit and placement policies for colleges and universities on the AP Credit Policy Search .
Meet the Development Committee for AP Calculus AB.
