Struggling with AP Calc AB [in 10th grade]

Applying to College
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She spends 4-5 hrs altogether for home work for all subjects

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No extra curricular, lot of friends and good friends. She make a point to hang out with friends on weekends (not all weekends but frequently). She go out with parents frequently for movies or shopping trips

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She is a blessing as a child :innocent:

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It sounds to me like you are describing a pace of work issue. It comes up a lot in math classes, although I always think that is unfortunate because in my view, real math tasks only rarely are very time pressured.

Anyway, a good math tutor should be able to understand such a problem and find ways to help. It won’t be a matter of re-teaching the concepts, it will be about finding efficient techniques for increasing pace of work that work for your kid.

And this should be efficient! I agree with others that 2 hours of just math study each day sounds like too much for something like Calc AB. This suggests to me some sort of inefficiency in the process, and that is precisely what needs to be diagnosed and fixed. As they say, if you practice the wrong way, you will play the wrong way, and so I would make it an explicit goal to get that down to much less time spent.

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My D24 struggled w/AP Calc AB. I had her use the Modern States’ online Calculus course to supplement her in-person instruction. At the end of the Modern States course, you take a practice CLEP exam in the subject. Once you pass the practice exam, they give you a voucher to take the CLEP exam for free (CLEP exams are administered by College Board). At the end of the school year, she ended up scoring a 3 on the AP Calc AB exam and got a passing score on the CLEP exam.

Might be worth a shot.

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This is not good - depending on the level of college she is seeking
or possible merit aid.

Life is about far more than school


I don’t know if she is parent driven or self driven, but I’d have her find a couple of things she enjoys - whether band, a sport, a club, a part time job, walking dogs at a shelter
whatever.

It will help her in spades -in applications at competitive schools, socially - as she’ll interact with others
and have a chance to accomplish things outside the classroom.

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I’m not sure if we just had a really odd teacher or not, but my daughter’s Calc teacher was “notorious” for very tough tests, where previous A students would get Cs. The test questions were much harder versions/ levels of the concepts given in class and on homework problems. Running out of time on tests happened a lot. That said, he had a complicated system of dropping the lowest test and replacing with midterm and then final exam or somethign I never totally figured out.

If students reworked the hard test problems, they were very prepared for the midterm and final. Most kids ended up with expected grades. It was just very very hard to look at grades until the end. I was about to pull my daughter from the class early in the semster until we learned this “through the grapevine” and she talked to the teacher. You might want to have talk to her teacher or if you know other parents to see if her drop in grades is unusual and what the plan to bring them up can be. We did get our daughter a tutor, but other kids just found harder problems online to better prepare for the tests. Your daughter is very advanced and understands the concepts, so that is promising!

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She is very social and enjoys her friend but she is not in to any type of art such painting, music etc. She has tried all of it but loose interest very soon. She plan on doing volunteer work, she had a good summer, writing some research paper. It is hard to find something these days that does not involve anything on computer

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She is definitely not parent driven and we (parents) don’t push her much

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This will help. If you know the topics well yourself, you can help her identify what to practice/drill. For an example, I used to tutor students in Algebra classes. After observing them “working hard”, I saw that they struggled on everything related to multiplication. They understood the concept of multiplication very well, but couldn’t apply it fluently enough, such as in factoring. We spent 5 minutes everyday on multiplication worksheets with the goal of getting 50 multiplications (of 2-10) correct in under 1 minute. This practice had nothing to do with Algebra, but was very effective in boosting the students’ confidence level and shortening the time needed to “work hard”. If a student has been doing well in Math and all of a sudden struggles in Calculus, I suspect that there’s something in earlier years that they either skipped or didn’t really master. It’s like trying to build a high tower but on the 7th floor there’s a weak pole. It needs to be strengthened, and all will be well.

This is not right. I teach programming in high school. Many of my students are above average or high achievers in math. They definitely don’t spend 2 hours a day on Math homework. The seniors in Cal BC spend about 1 hour a day. I know because they often use the time in my class to do math homework (they usually start it in math class and finish it in my class).

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Any suggestion for website, book or something for improving math aptitude ?

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OK - but there is definitely a ton out there that is not computer based.

But not everyone is cut out to do extras.

There’s nature and museums and animal shelters and cleanups and more.

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sorry I don’t have any suggestion on this. I help my students identifying their weak spots by observing them working on assignments everyday. It makes sense that there must be some general analytical tools to get the results much faster.

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My opinion is get out of that class. She is already ahead of the math trajectory. Do something she enjoys, and pick it up later.

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They are replicating the AP exam. Very few partial points are given by AP graders since that’s not how the scoring system is set up.

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Any advantage here for access to higher level classes or recognition for acceleration would be mitigated by a poor class grade and especially a poor AP test score.

A lot has been said here about hours studying. I’m not sure hours studying are any less virtuous than hours playing baseball, waitressing or hanging out. Any of these things can lead to good or bad. Of the lot, studying really doesn’t seem so bad to me unless you engage some trope of a boring academic nerd.

Most failures in calculus do not come from failure to understand calc concepts. It comes from poor algebra skills. This is a common mantra of calc tutors everywhere especially AB and BC level.

Drop the course and take a year to firm up algebra. Calc will then be doable and successful.

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You are missing the point. OP has posted that the D is studying 2 hours a night on calculus and not mastering the material. Not a question of “virtuous”, a question of efficacy. Doing anything that time-consuming without seeing any result leads one to question the activity.

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Please don’t get argumentative nor make it personal.

For some reason, every time anyone mentions studying as an activity, it brings out a chorus of “go to the museum, meadow, mall instead” suggestions. Fact on CC supported amply above for anyone to see and on countless other threads.

OP very clearly stated that student is able to grasp the calculus concepts. Please read OP’s posts - Thanks PL, As I said in my other message, she understand the concepts very well and problem is more around fluency and not making errors The issue is tests, quizzes and time.” - That all smacks of computational issues very likely from some weakness in algebra. I don’t know many math tutors that recommend the museum of natural history as a way to hone algebra computation. I thought that just takes good old fashioned practice. And good algebra skills could really help even in student’s future apparent career as a waitress as has been posited here.

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I would say Calc A-B in 10th grade is a norm only in magnets for STEM kids.
This is not crazy path but definitely not normal (My DD had Calc B-C in 11th with AP Stats , then Calc 3 and Differ equations through DE in 12th).
Can your daughter drop down from Calc A-B to some honor Calc? Then she can do Calc A-B next year.
Basically she needs slower speed.
Khan academy is your drill.
However, being Math major I can tell that drilling in Math is not the best approach. Thinking outside of the box is.
There are 3 possibilities here:

  1. Some lack of skills in previous material
  2. Indeed some lack of understanding (maybe not obvious to you)
  3. Anxiety.
    Here is another possibility. Please do not get upset over this idea. Usually many people have a ceiling in Math. For some it is Calc, for others abstract Algebra etc.
    Not all are “built” to be advanced Mathematician or advanced Chemist no matter how hard they would try. Maybe advanced Math is not the right path for your daughter, especially in 10th grade.
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