Mater Dei High School offers two Calculus courses:
AP Calculus and Calculus.

AP Calculus is intended for students who have a thorough background in the pre-requisite mathematics. (Students with a weak background should probably take Calculus, where the instructor will take more time to review pre-requisite material.) AP Calculus is a university level course which closely follows the syllabus written by the College Board for the AP Calculus course. However, we do not limit ourselves to only topics in the College Board curriculum. This course will prepare students for any second semester calculus course they take at the university level, whether the course uses a great deal of technology or is more traditional in nature.

The course prepares students for the AB Calculus exam. There is also a BC exam offered, and in the past several students have studied extra topics independently to prepare themselves for the BC exam.

Textbook: The text that we are currently using is:
Calculus: Single Variable, 3rd ed. by James Stewart
publ. by Brooks-Cole 1995, ISBN 0-534-21828-8

Curriculum:
First Semester: We do a PreCalculus review and then cover chapters 1 through 3. The chapter titles are:
Chap 1: Limits and Rates of Change
Chap 2: Derivatives
Chap 3: The Mean Value Theorem and Curve Sketching
Second Semester: Wecover chapter 4, and parts of chapters 5, 6, 7 and 8. The chapter titles are:
Chap 4: Integrals
Chap 5: Applications of Integration
Chap 6: Inverse Functions: exponenetial, logarithmic and inverse trig functions
Chap 7: Techniques of Integration
Chap 8: Further applications of Integration

Students who wish to study for the BC exam will have to talk with Mrs. King in December about what additional material they need to study. For the most part, it involves studying Chapters 9 and 10 plus assorted sections from Chapters 5, 6, 7 and 8.