Information exploration

You’ll need

Pens or pencils
Scrap paper
Access to the internet
Reference materials

Exploration planner

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Before you begin

You’ll need to gather reference materials.
It’s up to you whether you visit a local library or tourist information centre, use reference materials you already have at your meeting place, or ask people to bring some from home.
Reference materials could include: bus or train timetables, tourist attraction leaflets, dictionaries, encyclopaedias, atlases, maps, books such as ‘Guinness World Records’, or travel guidebooks.
For the ‘Reference relay’, you’ll need multiple copies of each item (enough to give one to each group of four or five people).
Once you’ve got the reference materials, plan the questions for the ‘Reference relay’. People should be able to answer them with information in the materials. It’s good to plan a mix of simpler and trickier questions.
It’ll be easier to ‘Plan your exploration investigation’ if you’ve already decided on a rough location so your reference materials are relevant for the area people have chosen.
In Scouts, an exploration is a ‘purpose with a journey’ – they’re one of the ways to get your Expedition Challenge Award.

Reference relay

The person leading the activity should ask if anyone knows what a reference material is. Reference materials are books or leaflets that people look at to find specific information they need.
Everyone should split into teams of four or five people.
The person leading the activity should put all of the reference materials at one end of the meeting place.
Each team should line up on the other side of the meeting place.
The person leading the activity should call out a question based on the reference materials available.
Each group should quickly decide what kind of reference material they’ll need to answer the question.
One person from each group should run and get the reference material and bring it back to their group.
The groups should look through the reference material until they find the right answer. The first group to find the right answer wins a point.

Everyone should keep repeating steps four to eight (replacing the reference materials each time) until the person leading the activity’s run out of questions.
Each team should take some reference materials and think of questions of their own. They should jot their questions (and the answers) down.
Teams should take it in turns to ask their questions while the other groups decide on a reference material, fetch it, and use it to answer the question. Everyone should swap roles until all of the teams’ questions have been asked.
If there’s internet access, the person leading the activity should call out a random question. Each team should use a device connected to the internet to find the answer.

Everyone should play one final round where they choose whether to use paper or online reference materials. The person leading the activity should ask a question, and the groups should race to find the answer first. Which method is quickest?

Plan your exploration investigation

Everyone should split into groups of about four people. They should find a space (chairs around a table usually work well and grab some scrap paper and pens or pencils.

Each group should think about a theme for their exploration investigation, for example, nature, buildings, culture, society, environment, history, or science.
Each group should use the reference materials to make a plan for their exploration. They could use the 'Exploration planner' to help.

Everyone should share their ideas.

Everyone should give helpful, constructive feedback on other groups’ ideas. If there’ll be using the plans to run explorations, it’s a great chance to get feedback on practical things.

For the Expedition Challenge Award, Scouts can do an exploration (a purpose with a journey) travelling to an area to carry out an investigation, or an expedition (a journey with a purpose) completing a task or small project.

	Exploration	Expedition
Group size	4+	4+
Time	2 days, 90+ minutes travel to destination, 5+ hours of investigation over 2 days (following previous research)	2 days, 4+ hours travel per day
Night away	1 night away	1 night away
Accommodation	Campsite, bunk house, hostel or similar	Campsite, bunk house, hostel or similar
Location	Countryside, town or city area not well known to team	Countryside or suburban area, ideally not well known to team
Transport	Foot, cycle, public transport, other	Foot, cycle, canoe, horse, other
Route planning	Rest/meal stops and timings	Rest/meal stops and timings
Equipment	Appropriate for terrain, mode of travel, and to deal with emergencies (NB: If camping, Scouts are not required to carry camping equipment)	Appropriate for terrain, mode of travel, and to deal with emergencies (NB: If camping, Scouts are not required to carry camping equipment)
Navigation	Timetables, street map, A-Z, compass, GPS	OS map, compass, GPS
Emergencies	Emergency plan	Emergency plan
Catering	Cooking and eating 1+ hot meal themselves (for example, using a kitchen, lightweight stove, or campfire)	Cooking and eating 1+ hot meal themselves (for example, using a kitchen, lightweight stove, or campfire)
Purpose	An investigation of an area	Task or small project
Permits needed	Nights Away plus possibly Hillwalking or Canoeing	Nights Away plus possibly Hillwalking, Cycling or Canoeing
Event Passport	May be issued to a Scout who will lead the rest of the team during Nights Away (Overnight venue should be aware and agree to this if the Scouts are to be unsupervised)	May be issued to a Scout who will lead the rest of the team during Nights Away (Overnight venue should be aware and agree to this if the Scouts are to be unsupervised)
Report back	Report, performance, video, presentation, blog, website	Report, performance, video, presentation, blog, website

For either option, Scouts must have appropriate adult supervision bearing in mind their age, experience, the terrain and activity. As a minimum, such supervision should involve a visual check at the beginning and end of the day, and an adult being available in the local area. It would not usually be an appropriate challenge for the Scouts to be accompanied at all times by an adult. Rules and guidance on peer led activities can be found in POR.

You should ensure that you follow the rules and guidance for running Nights Away experiences, such as relevant activity permits and nights away permits, InTouch, parental permission and first aid arrangements.

Reflection

This activity was all about dreaming big and gaining the skills people need to be more independent now and in the future. It’s hard to do all of this without making mistakes – this activity gave everyone the chance to get feedback from others, so was a great opportunity to try things out. How did people find getting feedback? It’s not always easy to hear what people think. Is it better for a friend to (kindly) point out your mistake in the meeting place, or to find out in the middle of the exploration, after you’ve got on the wrong bus? When else may it be useful to be able to listen to and act on feedback? People may think about school or work, or even about being a good friend.

This activity also needed people to problem-solve. Putting the minimum work in here wasn’t an option – hopefully people grabbed the chance to find out about something they find interesting with the friends. Did anyone come across any problems that were difficult to solve? Perhaps there was a great attraction, but it didn’t work with public transport or budgets. How did they solve problems? How did people work together to make decisions in their groups? Did anyone take the easy way out at any point? What did people learn from their feedback?

Safety

All activities must be safely managed. You must complete a thorough risk assessment and take appropriate steps to reduce risk. Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Always get approval for the activity, and have suitable supervision and an InTouch process.

Active games: The game area should be free of hazards. Explain the rules of the game clearly and have a clear way to communicate that the game must stop when needed. Take a look at our guidance on running active games safely.
Online safety: Supervise young people when they’re online and give them advice about staying safe. Take a look at our online safety or bullying guidance. The NSPCC offers more advice and guidance, too. If you want to know more about specific social networks and games, Childnet has information and safety tips for apps. You can also report anything that’s worried you online to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command. As always, if you’ve got concerns about a young person’s welfare, including their online experiences, follow the Yellow Card to make a report.