In all teaching, assessing prior knowledge is a essential. Most often the "pre-test" lacks authenticity and is cumbersome. It frequently assesses what student don't know rather than what they know. In this episode we explore some strategies to escape the monotony of multiple choice pre-assessments that might evaluate how well they guess rather than what they truly know. We discuss a strategy called "Brain Dump" as a way to both assess prior knowledge, but activate it too. As a S/O to Episode 2 we share how it operates as an effective "hook" as well.