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Printed edition cover.
I set up this logbook for my Scouts to keep records of meetings, camping trips plans, adventures and memorable moments. They use the information to help their patrol understand what they should start doing, keep on doing or, perhaps, stop doing. By reflecting on things that worked well and things that don’t go as planned they can avoid past mistakes and make better plans in the future. By recording their thoughts they also create a memorable record of their Scouting adventures.
The logbook is divided into these sections:
Patrol Roster
Patrol members and other important contacts.
Table of Contents
Fill-in-the-blank table of contents pages.
Meetings
There’s space for recording who attends the meeting, a checklist for tasks that need to be accomplished at the meeting, plans made, and who will be responsible for carrying them out (there’s also plenty of space to keep additional notes of discussions and decisions).
Camping Trips
Records for short-term camping trips (one or two nights) and long-term trips (three to seven nights). Each includes a roster, a checklist for tasks that need to be accomplished, and plenty of room for notes.
Trip records include a section titled ‘roses and thorns’. To use the rose, thorn, and bud idea; every Scout shares three things;
1. A rose is something good that happened.
2. A thorn is a challenge they encountered
3. A bud is something you’d like to do in the future.
Here’s an example of a rose, thorn and bud from one patrol member:
Short-term camping records have one ‘rose and thorn’ page for the whole trip and two pages for additional notes. Long-term camping records have daily ‘rose and thorn’ pages and a page for additional notes each day.
General Notes
There are plenty of blank pages for additional notes. There’s a place to title each page, and you can keep track of them by writing that title and page number in the table of contents.
Progress or Record Charts
There are a number of progress or record charts for tracking attendance, rank advancement or anything you like.
The Patrol logbook is available as a soft cover book and in a free PDF version.
Printed Soft Cover Logbook
5.5″ x 8.5″ (about the size of a Scout Handbook) 246 pages including:
- 40 Meeting records
- 13 Short-term (2 day) camping records
- 3 Long-term (7 day)camping records
- 20 pages for general notes
- 16 pages of progress charts
Patrol Log Book: A record of plans, adventures and memories
Example Pages from the Printed Edition
PDF Version
Free PDF file formatted to print out on 81/2 X 11 paper (scaled-up versions of the book pages pictured above) including:
- Instruction page
- Patrol roster page
- Meeting record pages
- Short and long-term camping pages
- Progress charts
The Patrol Log PDF fileand over 40 other infographics and helpful PDF documents
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This is a very interesting idea, but can we get scouts to write things done ;-)… at least it is only looking for short responses and that is where you want to start.
However, nice log book, but when is the app coming out for the PL’s iPhone or Android Phone? Is there a version for the Troop Scribe or SPL?
Boy’s Life prints out a similar booklet (I like yours better) every year, but they went to an online pdf this year, and is geared towards the SPL and not the PL. What are your thoughts on that booklet?
The booklet is found at http://www.scouting.org/magazines/BoysLifePromo.aspx with a link titled “2014-2015 Boy’s Life Boy Scout Leader Program Notebook”.
The Boys Life Booklet isn’t really for patrols, or actually youth leaders that I can tell. What I wanted to do was create a tool for patrol leaders.
I don’t think an app would get much farther than an actual piece of paper, some will use it, some won’t but at least they have the opportunity.
In our current troop setting, an app would actually work, but you are right… this maybe more of an exception, from my general experience, it is considered success in planning if they pull out a sheet of paper during any planning meeting or PLC. It does not matter what they put on that paper, just that they brought pen and paper can be exciting ;-), and any effort by the scouts is a start in the building character and planning skills.