{"id":7964,"date":"2025-11-17T04:16:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T04:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=7964"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:31:18","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:31:18","slug":"the-importance-of-pretesting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=7964","title":{"rendered":"THE IMPORTANCE OF PRETESTING"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This past weekend I had the opportunity to put some of my dissertation thoughts into an hourlong workshop at a youth retreat at nearby Southeastern Baptist Youth Camp.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In keeping with one of the basic principles of good teaching practices, I decided to ask the teens a simple question on Friday night before my workshop on Saturday. I was planning to talk about the gospel being bigger than the typical &#8220;you&#8217;re a sinner so Jesus died for you and if you believe in Him you can go to heaven when you die&#8221; concept, and I wanted to know what the kids already knew.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So I asked the retreat organizers to hand out these cards and ask the teens to give their best responses:<\/p>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/img\/b\/R29vZ2xl\/AVvXsEiUu0ezrwnZTyU4apjws1pDyuTCZ0pIrHRyb0mqWHf8BzygL11Y1IcnV7vDwUeZ-9wIVY6cF9A-1LWzysENn6mkT23pOgZ_BlOTsmDixtdlCvOjTg9le7o32FgvEaUFJqBSuLLbtg_Prn0GwCtLmr2MCcE1TcqdzDi5ahPqUBiFUm30B1zH54YAOKBQsXw\/w640-h414\/Survey%20Question.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1294\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When I came in the next morning, the cards had been filled out AND the other adult leaders &#8211; local pastors and youth pastors &#8211; had read over the replies.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">They were aghast!<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I had received responses like these:\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\n<li>&#8220;The gospel is what helps you get closer to God, like listening to Christian music, praying, reading your Bible, or talking to someone.&#8221;<\/li>\n\n\n<li>&#8220;The gospel is the story of Jesus Christ, who is the light of the world.&#8221;<\/li>\n\n\n<li>&#8220;The gospel is a place where you learn about God and what he did for you because he loves you.&#8221;<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The responses prompted talk among the camp leadership of revamping the summer camp teaching for next season! They realized they were entirely overestimating what the teens already knew.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Basic teaching: Before the lesson, find out what your students already know, what they don&#8217;t know, and what they think they know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This past weekend I had the opportunity to put some of my dissertation thoughts into an hourlong workshop at a youth retreat at nearby Southeastern Baptist Youth Camp.\u00a0 In keeping with one of the basic principles of good teaching practices, I decided to ask the teens a simple question on Friday night before my workshop [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7965,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,23,137],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-good-teaching","category-gospel","category-pretest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7964"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7966,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7964\/revisions\/7966"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}