Test Before You Teach
Quiz students before teaching. Struggling to retrieve primes the brain; students who fail before instruction remember the answer more reliably once taught. Failure is productive.
The strategy, as published
Exactly as it appears on the card
Part of The Testing Effect in 01 Retrieval Practice, where it sits alongside its neighbouring strategies, the infographic and the thinking for the whole area.
Why you might use it
The problem it may help with
Quizzing pupils on content they have not yet been taught sounds backwards, and that is exactly the card's claim: struggling to retrieve primes the brain, and students who fail before instruction remember the answer more reliably once taught.
It reframes failure as preparation. The wrong answers are not a problem to manage; they are the priming.
What it might look like
One version of it, in a classroom
Before a lesson introducing the causes of the First World War, a history teacher poses three questions the class cannot yet answer well and asks for best guesses. No marks, no discussion beyond a brief reveal. The lesson then teaches the material, and the earlier guesses give the new content something to attach to.
Try it
A way to begin
Open one new topic with two or three questions pupils cannot yet answer, asked for best guesses, before any teaching. Keep it brief; the priming is the point, not the score.
What to notice
Reading what happens
- How pupils handle being asked what they do not know. The activity only works if guessing wrong is visibly safe.
- Whether the pre-tested material comes back more reliably later than material introduced without the quiz.
Things to think about
Before and while you use it
- Be explicit with the class about why you are doing it. Pupils told that failure here is productive respond differently from pupils who suspect they are being caught out.
- This pairs naturally with the generation effect: a wrong answer generated before the right one is revealed is doing encoding work.
The wider thinking
Where the evidence sits
Bjork's work on pretesting and Kapur's on productive failure point the same way: unsuccessful retrieval before instruction can prepare memory for what follows. The card’s attribution stands as published: Bjork; Kapur.
The fuller picture, sources included, is in further reading and evidence for Retrieval Practice.
Keep exploring
Where next?
Back to this strategy in 01 Retrieval Practice, across to what you're trying to improve, or into all 144 at once.
Want to take this further?
Support is available
Pedagogy First gives you a starting point. If you want support exploring how approaches like this can work across your school, trust or professional learning programme, that work is available.