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Description

Resources designed to help support and empower Cubs to plan and run a whole meeting by themeselves alongside their Six

I realise the instructions are fairly long, however stick with it as your Cubs will have an absolute blast! It always comes up at our Pack Forums as something they'd like to do again. It also works out at 5 weeks that you don't have to be too worried about planning, as the Cubs do most of it for you!

Resources

Print out the attached documents
Pens and paper

Instructions

The YouShape badge is a great chance to involve the Cubs in planning the programme and boost their confidence in their ideas and leadership skills! As this is the only badge where young people decide for themselves if they’ve met each requirement, the Cubs are key to deciding whether you should award the badges or not - it's great to hand the badges out at the end of each of the weeks so that the Cubs can directly see what they're working towards.

This activity will be completed over several weeks - we have four Sixes of Cubs so our weekly meetings would be as follows:

Week 1 - Explain YouShape and get Sixes to plan a weekly meeting each (YouShape Central + Plan badges)
Week 2 - Red Six runs the night
Week 3 - Blue Six runs the night
Week 4 - Green Six runs the night
Week 5 - Yellow Six runs the night

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Week 1 - YouShape Central and Plan Badges

1. Explain to the Cubs what the YouShape badge is, and what the general plan is for the next few weeks. Hold up the print outs of the large YouShape badges so they can see what they're working towards.
2. Ask them what they think we have done well at Cubs, and what we could make better - make a note of these points for your future planning!
3. Have a discussion around what makes a good Cub meeting, perhaps there's a similar thing that has made all of the meetings they have just suggested good meetings? Show them the 'planning an evening' checklist (or make your own as a Pack), so that they have something to refer to/check their plans against.

4. Split the Cubs into their Sixes, and get them to sit at their tables with a pen and piece of paper each. If possible, you really want to have one adult/Young Leader per table to help and guide the Cubs (sometimes their ideas are a little too adventurous/costly/take too much time, so having someone to redirect their suggestions is fab). You will also need to print one of each of the following per table - Brief and Blank Evening Plan, Badges and Activity Suggestion Cards
5. Ask the Cubs to read the brief and brainstorm ideas of what they can do on the evening that they'll be running. Encourage them to use the Activity Suggestion Cards and base their evening on one of the badges - they can write notes and ideas on their piece of paper before they make a final decision on the Evening Plan sheet.
6. Let them do this for maybe 20 minutes, have a break, swap the Leader at the table (for new suggestions), and then resume and encourage them to try to fill in the Evening Plan sheet, as well as noting the resources/help they'll need from Leaders on their evening (the sheet is in the same document).

7. By the end of the evening, each Six should have a rough plan of what they'll do on their evening. Ask the Pack if they think they understand what the YouShape Award is about, and if they feel like they've planned well. Do they think they have achieved the central and plan badge? Hopefully they do, so award them the two badges.

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Optional - Break week

You may wish to add in an additional week after Week 1 of something unrelated, to allow you as Leaders to have the time to gather the resources the Cubs have asked for and to type up/prepare the programme for the evenings the Cubs will lead. Alternatively you could have Week 1 just before a half term, giving you a week without a meeting while the Cubs are on their break to plan/prepare, and then resume when they return.

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Week 2 to 5 - YouShape Lead Badge

Preparation
1. Before each of the remaining meetings, it's a good idea to type up the plan that the Six came up with to ensure that the plan is feasible (both in time they take and cost), tasks are shared fairly among the Cubs in the Six, and so that the instructions/script for the Cubs is legible.
2. Gather all of the equipment and resources that the Cubs will need for the evening
3. Ahead of the meeting that the Six is running (around 3 days before) email the final plan for the meeting to the Cubs in the Six (well, their parents) as well as the other Leaders. This means that they're not surprised with it on the day of their meeting, and it's not so far in advance that they may start worrying about it.
4. Other things that are useful to have for the evening are a clock so that the Six leading can manage the time according to the plan, and potentially a (clean) whistle in case you have a very excitable Pack

On the night
1. Ask one Leader/YL to run a short game while another Leader takes the Six running the night aside. Give each member of this Six a copy of the plan and go through it so they know exactly what is happening and can ask any questions they might have.
2. It's now over to the Six to run the Grand Howl, lead the activities for the evening, and then close the meeting. Each Leader should also have a copy of the plan so that they can help or prompt the Six if needed, however they should try not to interfere too much as 9 times out of 10 the Cubs are on the ball and know what's going on!

Note: Something that was really effective for our Pack was a call and response for when the Six leading needed to get the attention of the other Cubs. We gave the Cubs three options to choose from at the start of the first week, and they voted for their favourite. We went with the Six Leading shouting: "Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?" and the Cubs shouting back: "SpongeBob SquarePants!". They sometimes had to repeat it a couple of times, but the Cubs soon knew that it meant they needed to stop what they were doing and respond, then be quite and listen to the Six leading.

At the end of the night:
1. Ask the Cubs if they had fun, and ask the Six leading the evening if they also had fun. Do the Cubs think the Six leading the evening should be awarded the Lead part of the badge? (The answer should near enough always be yes, evening if the meeting went poorly or things didn't go as planned - they still stood at the front, leading the rest of the Pack)
2. Hand out the 'Lead' badge, and get the Cubs to give them a round of applause

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Resources attached - most of these are pretty self-explanatory, but just for clarity:

Resources for you to print:
- Large YouShape Badges - Print and cut out so that the Cubs can see what they're working towards
- Brief and Blank Evening Plan - Sheets for the Cubs to fill in while planning their evening in their Sixes (you probably want a couple of spares in case they need to start over)
- Badges and Activity Suggestion Cards - Print these double-sided so that one side has the badge requirements on, and the other has suggestions of activities. You could laminate them if you wanted to reuse them regularly, and there's a Publisher file that you can download and edit if you'd like.
- Planning an Evening Checklist - Print this or make your own with the help of your Pack so that the Sixes know what they need to include in their plans

Resources that are there as examples:
- Games and previous Cub Meeting ideas - We wrote these ideas up so that the Cubs had a starting point and something to inspire ideas, you can do the same for the activities you've recently done with your Cubs. There's a PDF file of what we've done with our Cubs, but also a Word file that you can download and edit if you'd like.
- Example Evening Programme - This is what we gave each member of the Six when they were leading their evening. We emailed a copy to them around 3 days in advance so they could see it before (to calm any nerves in case they were worried), and then on the evening we went through it with the Six at the start. They used it as a script and read from it throughout the evening. (Note that names have been changed so none of of real Cub's names were used)

Tags

• cubs
• cubs come up with ideas
• leading
• Plan
• Plan a night
• team Leader
• team Leader Challenge
• YouShape
• YouShape Lead
• YouShape Plan

Badge Links

• Central badge - YouShape Award - Choose
• Lead - YouShape Award - Lead
• Plan - YouShape Award - Meeting
• Team Leader - Lead
• Team Leader - Represent