One page per class, newest at the top of your teacher’s list: the agenda we followed and anything to do before next time. If you were away, start here — then try the thinking task before reading anything else about it. The page holds the plan; the discoveries happen at the boards.
Our semester runs in four units:
- Unit 1 — Rates of Change and the Limit: the question this course exists to answer — how fast, right now? — made precise by secants, limits, and the definition of the derivative, then put on trial in The Speed Camera.
- Unit 2 — The Derivative’s Toolbox: the rules — power, product, chain, exponential, sinusoidal — every one conjectured at the boards before it is stated, then flown in Smooth Landing.
- Unit 3 — What Derivatives Are For: reading a function’s story from its derivatives, sketching with proof, and optimization with an honest accounting of what “best” costs in The Packaging Brief.
- Unit 4 — Vectors, Lines, and Planes: arrows that do algebra — dot and cross products, lines and planes in three-space — navigated in The Flight Path, then presented to guests at The Math Symposium.