Ben arrived a bit late today. He was tired at the beginning of class. I allowed him to have a few minutes to get situated and then we began. I wrote 3 review problems on the board and had Ben work through the solutions aloud as I wrote them on the board. We reviewed multiplying, dividing, and zero property. Next, I reintroduced to Ben the concept of negative exponents. I emphasized the fact that negative exponents do not indicate a negative value. (The mathematicians really should have come up with a different symbol than a minus sign). Instead, we learned that negative exponents really mean to make the value positive and move it. We practiced simplifying 5^-2 (five to the negative two power). We wrote it as 1/5^2 which is 1/25. Then I gave Ben examples with variables mixed in. He struggled at first, but with more practice he will get it!