Programme Planning Template

Week commencing	Activities planned	Time	Themes covered
Week 1 __/__/__	Discover the new programme activity from guiding magazine                   Girls choosing unit meeting activities using dice from the guiding magazine                                             Patrol time – what interest badges are you interested in trying?                Promise activities	30 mins 20 mins 15 mins 15 mins	Know Myself □ Express Myself □  Be Well □ Have adventures □ Take Action □ Skills For My Future □ (tick themes as appropriate)

Week 1 extract from the template Programme Planner which can be found at: Girlguiding.org.uk/celebrateeverygirl . I'm using this one to start with, so I can use it to illustrate points in new programme trainings. There is also a template for a weekly record sheet to record individual girls progress during the unit meeting that can then be registered on GO at a later opportunity. Although not strictly in the plan for the awareness trainings,I think leaders will have concerns on how to record, so will need to be able to re-assure them there are processes in place.

Not enough Unit Meeting Activities (UMA's) to complete a theme award just yet!

Some clever, and really organised leaders, spotted at the start of the Summer holidays that the new programme was missing some UMA's in order for girls to complete all the theme awards. In response to a number of enquiries being received by GG put, the following guidance was added to the UMA page, and sent in a newsletter: 

"There are lots of different activities now available for units – 36 for each section. It’s not quite enough for girls to complete all their Theme awards just yet, but we won’t stop there! New packs of activities are already being developed and will be released regularly each year so there’ll always be something fresh for girls to try.

As girls focus on a range of themes they’ll build up the hours they need to get their hands on their Theme awards over a couple of years. To make sure you have a balanced and varied programme, try to mix and match activities from different themes over time. This gives girls plenty of time to make up the right number of unit meeting activity hours if they want to work towards an award.

The new programme has been designed to take up about 60% of unit meeting time. That leaves plenty of room for leaders and girls to do other activities too. These can be anything you want, including adventurous outdoor activities, games, trips and visits, and don’t need to connect to a theme. Just remember that if girls want to do a Theme award they’ll need to make up the unit meeting activity hours by doing official Girlguiding unit meeting activities".

I wonder how it will be announced that there are new UMA's available to purchase? I'm anticipating the lack of hours will come  up in forthcoming new programme trainings!
The red highlighting is mine and not GG UK's!

New Programme e-learning

All the new programme e-learning is listed here:
www.girlguiding.org.uk/making-guiding-happen/learning-and-development/programme-training/

There are 5 separate modules:

• Programme Overview
• UMA's & Skills Builders
• Interest & Anniversary Badges
• Awards
• Unit Programme Planning

Section handbooks & badge/record books is NOT available as an e-learn, only as webinar or in person.

The most useful of them all I found was the Unit programme planning module, which introduced a semi completed template to use as a model programme plan. This one also gave the most food for thought on how to implement the programme.

Much improved style of e-learning than we have ever seen before and worth spending the time to work through.

 

Guidance notes for all leaders

This is the link to the new 20 page document outlining the essential elements of the programme and how it can be implemented in your unit:
www.girlguiding.org.uk/globalassets/docs-and-resources/programme-and-activities/guidance-notes-for-all-leaders.pdf

I would have liked to see a date on the document so we can easily see when it has been updated - rather than checking to see if the number of pages has increased! However, pleased that risk assessments get a mention on page 19 along with recording on GO, but does feel like a first draft.

UK Parliament Week 2018

Challenge Pack for 2018 Parliament Week

After being critical of the activities supplied last year with the UK Parliament Week, I am impressed to see this year's pack arrive with a Region Challenge resource which is easily deployable with Brownies. Last year I struggled to adapt the activities to brownies so used the resource with Guides instead. However for 2018 SW Region have produced a 38 page resource with a forward by our Region Chief Commissioner. The resource is broken down into 3 sections "What is Parliament", "Vote 100" and "South West England Regional Challenges" with a suggestion that a minimum of 4 activities are completed from across the 3 sections. 

There is a good range of activities for use across the age ranges (only 1 colouring sheet this time!), the resource is informative at that same time as providing templates - includes a template ballot paper this time so no need to make your own, as I did last year.  There is a set of cards for the revamp of the old favourite of rule your own Island  - where the colours could suggest use with brownies or guides. There are photographs with a guiding theme too which is another thoughtful touch. Going to be so much easier to do with brownies this year. 

The pack includes a ribbon votes for women sash (shame their is only one) and usual ballot box, photo card & pin badges but no pens this year. I'm building up a useful collection of Parliament & democracy type resources and I'm thinking how I can incorporate the ballot box(s) into girl led guiding for the girls to choose their own programme!

Don't forget to order your cloth badges as part of the evaluation survey which comes from UK Parliament outreach and NOT Region. (I didn't get the email with the survey link last year, and had to request it, so we nearly missed out on the badges!)