UM1 New Term, New Guides and Patrols

Unit Meeting 1

Our first week back at Guides, and a new year for us all.  We have 4 new starters, taking us up to 28 girls in total - our largest unit size for some time.  The new girls all seemed to settle in really well.

Patrols and democratic republics
Tonight the girls re-arranged their patrols - with encouragement to keep the numbers fairly equal and an explanation of why this was to their benefit (equal time on equipment when shared equipment during patrol time, same amount of time per person to complete tasks during patrol time, etc).  They organised themselves, but I sensed that there may still be some who aren't happy with how their patrols have now changed.
The girls voted for, and chose, their new Patrol Leaders and Patrol Seconds, with Panda patrol voting to remain as the Democratic Republic of Panda.

Unit Guidelines
In their patrols, we asked the girls to come up with the unit guidelines they wanted to see, and at the end, each patrol read out their chosen guidelines.  Surprisingly, all patrols agreed on nearly all of the rules (even the ones that they aren't very good at following):

1. Listen to others; don't talk if others are speaking
2. Hands up, shut up
3. Always be fair and kind to others
4. Have biscuits and drinks everyone
5. No phones or ipods in the meeting
6. Be sensible (With the older ones adding the traditional 'No Blood on the Walls'!)
7. Have FUN and Join In!

Two patrols also added the five Cs

• Be: Caring, courteous, cooperative, considerate and commitment.

I was pretty impressed that they came up with this all themselves. Let's see if they follow them!

Feedback, self-management and choosing the programme
We used a new method of asking for the guides' suggestions for activities. Our young leader put 3 large A3 sheets around the room with the following titles:

• Badges I'd like to do
• Ideas for activities next term
• Ideas for camp activities or themes

Throughout the meeting, the guides could write their ideas for each category on post-it notes and stick them on the appropriate banner. This resulted in lots of suggestions and resolved a problem we had encountered when asking for feedback and ideas before.

Previously, guides were asked for feedback and suggestions in patrols. Several complained that only the loudest got their opinions written down, or the person holding the pen didn't write down the opinions of everyone, especially if some people in the patrol wanted 'more craft' and some wanted 'less craft' for example.  The girls wanted to each give their *own* suggestions, and not have them filtered by others in their patrol.

This seemed to work really well. We had LOADS of suggestions, all sorts of things, on all the boards.

Games

We played several silly games which both worked well

• Me too! Chairs in a circle facing in, one person in the middle. Person in the middle makes a statement about themselves. Anyone else who matches that statement shouts ME TOO! And runs to swap place with another person. The one in the middle must also try to get a chair.
• Moving Chairs - chairs in a circle facing outwards, one chair not enough, people move along chairs left or right and the one girl on the outside must try and run round to get an empty chair as everyone is moving around.