Tutored college pre-algebra.  Her and I covered fractions in depth. The interesting point I reminded her about was the reason zero cannot be in the denominator.  Using an apple pie example, the denominator number of pieces the pie is cut into.  The top number is the pieces of pie referenced.  With zero in the denominator, this would mean their is no pie.  A simple concept, however most classes do not cover the details.  At the end of the discussion, she a better foundation!  Nice.

We reviewed his vocabulary for starters.  He is steadily increasing his vocab list.  On the Spanish class front, we implemented a program to bring his 'C' up to an 'A'.  He is at a high 'B' currently.  Keep up the excellent progress!

She and I reviewed her returned homework and test papers today.  She had 7 A's and 13 B's.  Needless to say, she was excited.  Incredible improvement in less than a month! We are both reading a 'scary' zombie book.  4 pages a night is the goal.   We will be starting a two week short story, reading intensive program on Monday.  Every night she will read a short story and answer five questions.  In two week, with her nightly reading and our twice a week sessions, we should be able to cover 20 story stories and questions! 

Second day tutoring student in Algebra II.  He and I review how to remove the negative sign from under the square root sign.  The theory behind the process is quite complex, however the process is rudimentary.  I explained to him to just take the negative sign out of the square root, turn the sign on it's side and put a hat on it.  This forms an i, which represents an imaginary number, and places the i in the proper place in the equation.  After the review, he told me"math is already getting easier because of the simple steps I showed him."  How nice it is to have a job in which I make a difference is a person's life!

Yesterday was a most excellent day!  Tutored 8th grader in reading.  We read about Europeans colonializing  Africa in the 1800's.  We identified several vocabulary words through our reading.  For example, we noted "confine" as meaning to restrict from.  This term was used to describe the Europeans being confined to the coastal areas of Africa.  His reading has improved exponentially!  

He just knocked down a 96% on his math test covering histograms! Nicely done!  We reviewed the formula for finding the slope of a line, which is: m=(y2-y1)/(x2-x1).  FYI, the review problem came from a college level text book!  Since he just completed a test, we expanded our session to include reading and writing.  With this expansion, we started him on a new vocab book.  

He and I started a new vocab list.  An interesting word we looked up was "scribe".  The word has several meanings from ancient Israeli writer to a general writer or journalist.  Further, we read a James Rollins Novel.  The novel engaging with historical references.   Kudos to him, he is way ahead in reading the book we are reviewing, which is on the sunshine reader list: Darklife.