My main goal is to teach students how to use the material for themselves. I am a big advocate of critical thinking as a path to best understanding the material; teaching how best to use what needs to be memorized helps create room to grow with the material. And, who knows, it might inspire the next scientist.

Find out what they already know. I ask a lot of questions, so, given a topic, I'd ask for brainstorming. Listening to a student's ideas helps me get a better understanding of how many pieces they already have, and what connections are still needed to put into place.

Enthusiasm is infectious. I love biology, and finding out the richer connections about concepts in the discipline is fascinating to me. I try to share that with others so that, as new ideas crop up, they already want to assemble that into their headspace of other knowledge.

Short activities or experiments go a long way. In nicer weather, a short field trip to clear the mind can turn up a wealth of insects or fascinating curiosities to discuss. Likewise, with a little planning and foreknowledge, I can pull off a short experiment to use as an icebreaker and attention getter for the session.

Discuss. Analogies are key to my teaching; if I can better explore a similar situation using the concept, I can help students see it in a way that puts a meaning behind it. I am also an avid doodler, and cartooning out a concept helps me share abstract ideas in a more visual form. Students are welcome to keep the toons and put them on their fridge, too!

That's a bit of a stretch for me; I am not trained as a reading coach. The tried and true of identifying vocabulary words that pose difficulty and defining them may help, but I would more ask the student as an individual what has worked for them to get by.

Knowing ahead of time what subjects they are going over helps tremendously. Even a day or so helps me plan out activities around those concepts. I have been an educator for over 15 years, so I have a few tricks up my sleeve.

Hands-on activities and storytelling, with a lot of humor sprinkled in. Where possible, I use humor in my analogies, because nobody expects discussions about hormones and cell organelles to be anything but bone dry. The hands-on activities can be concept mapping, manipulating cut outs, or something curiosity-building to keep interest high.

"Try your own analogy. Explain it to me in another way." Or, "What's missing? What do we have left to discuss on this?" One of the higher of Bloom's levels is to ensure students can apply a concept on their own; hearing their attempts and questions about the material yet to cover helps me get a clear view of where they are and what more we should work on.

Solid feedback. Even when somebody is way off, I try to be fun about it, and when they're right, even with a guess, I let them off the hook. "You're right. Tell me why you're right." Doing so takes the pressure off. I also am quick to tell a tutored student that I am not going to give them any grades at all, so sessions are the perfect time to be wrong -- what would it even cost them?

The most straightforward way is to ask. "What questions do you have about this subject so far?" can yield good results. However, oftentimes, they may not understand the gaps enough to have a question. Looking over their notes and pointing at pieces to ask if they get what they wrote and how it matters helps give me an idea of where they are at with a given topic. Explanations of the material as we progress also gives me a live test over their comprehension thus far.

I'm not sure I can make a generic answer out of this question; student needs are as individual as the student.

Books, both mine and the students. If in-person, I'll try to bring something hands-on. Depending on the age of the student and if web resources are appropriate, I will direct students to view webpages with me; this works nicely for distance learning as well.