Motivating Scout Participation

I have recently been discouraged by the lack of motivation to participate felt by my Scouts. I don't think it's that the Scouts aren't having fun at meetings (some would probably beg to differ depending on the meeting, though) I just feel like there isn't a general excitement and anticipation about going to a Scout meeting. At this age I think a lot of it is the parents not finding Scouting to be a high enough priority, but that's another issue entirely. I am instituting a plan this year that I hope will help encourage a little better participation from my Scouts.

I can't take full credit for my new plan. It's nothing new and I got turned on to it by reading a post on the LDS-Scouts Yahoo! group. The general idea of the program is to award beads for a variety of participation-related items. Here is the list I've come up with so far:

• Red - attending a meeting


• Yellow - attending an activity (non-meeting, non-campout)


• Green - attending a campout


• Purple - exceptional participation at a meeting, activity or campout


• White - exceptional display of Scout spirit, service, etc.

The purple and white beads are awarded on a discretionary basis. I decided that we should award at least one purple bead every meeting determined by a quick leader discussion. If more than one is deserved more are awarded, but at least one should be awarded. I made certain to stipulate to the Scouts that the participation bead was earned by paying attention, answering questions and not having to be "reeled in" every few minutes.

I needed some way for the Scouts to display the beads on their uniform and my wife suggested a piece of string or leather thong that could be worn on the shoulder next to the epaulette. With the size beads I got, a 10-inch loop of leather string can hold about 35 beads.

The last piece of the plan is awards for earning a certain number of beads. I kept it simple and said that for every 20 beads earned the Scout would get a $5 gift certificate to McDonald's. If the Scout earned 75 beads he would get a pocketknife. Based on the level of participation needed for 75 beads, I only expect a few scouts to get the pocketknife. I also figured that I should be able to find a knife for around $10-$15.

This will be my first time running a plan like this and I may see a few surprises, but my hope is that this will get the Scouts' interest flowing and motivate them to want to come to meetings and participate. I guess I'll see how it goes.

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Theme Oriented Meeting Plan

Here is the secondof my two meeting plans. The point of both is to provide my lesson plan for meetings. While preparing this plan for posting I realized that some of meetings outlined may be a little jam-packed. I run an hour-and-a-half meeting and a couple of these may push that time a little based on how I normally present the topics. If you follow this plan you may have to be a little strict on staying on topic to get through all of the items. As always, though, this is just my opinion based on how I do things. Mix it up and do it your own way.

This particular meeting plan is designed to collect similar activities into one block of meetings. For example, first-aid requirements are spread throughout all three ranks. This plan collects all of those requirements into one block of meetings. The benefit of following this type of plan is that you are covering the same type of thing for multiple meetings in a row. This could help your Scouts' retention capability. The downside of this type of plan is that requirements from all of the ranks are being worked on simultaneously. The net effect of this is that your Scouts won't receive rank advancements until they are completely done with one cycle of your program. And they will most likely receive all three rank advancements in one court of honor. This isn't necessarily bad, it just means that the Scouts won't really see their progress as they move through your program.

I should probably note that I no longer follow this plan (even though I developed it.) I used it for several years and it worked fine, but I found that parents were complaining about their son not receiving any awards every Court of Honor. I now follow my "Rank-Oriented Meeting Plan" and that gives more incremental recognition.

11 Year Old Scout Theme-Oriented Plan

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Rank Oriented Meeting Plan

Here is the first of my two meeting plans. The point of both is to provide my lesson plan for meetings. The combination of activities for a meeting seem to work well for my teaching style and I typically don't run over my hour-and-a-half meeting length.

This particular meeting plan is designed to take the Scouts through the rank requirements in chronological order. This means that, for the most part, all of the requirements for one rank are completed prior to addressing any requirements for the next rank. I think the only time I deviate from that is where the swimming requirements are concerned. There are swimming requirements in both Second and First Class and I didn't want to schedule two swimming activities only a few weeks apart.

11 Year Old Scout Rank-Oriented Plan

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