Pronoun pairs

Before you begin 

• Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. There's additional guidance to carry out your risk assessment, including examples. Don’t forget to make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely. 
• Make sure you’ll have enough adult helpers. You may need some parents and carers to help if you’re short on helpers. 

Planning this activity

• Before the session, print the pronoun pair cards (enough for each group). 

What are pronouns? 

1. Explain to everyone that you’re going to be discussing pronouns. Tell everyone that pronouns are words used to refer to a person instead of their name.  
2. Explain that pronouns often also refer to the person’s gender, such as ‘she/her’ or ‘he/him’. However, people can also use gender-neutral pronouns, such as ‘they/them’ or ‘ze/zir’. Some people may be comfortable with more than one set of pronouns being used for them, for example “she/her” and “they/them”. 
3. Explain that a lot of people may have had negative reactions, experienced bullying or abuse, or been discriminated against because they’re part of the LGBTQ+ community and this isn’t acceptable. Tell everyone that at Scouts, we welcome and accept everyone, regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation. By taking part in this activity and learning about pronouns, we can celebrate the inclusion and diversity we’re so proud of. 
4. To show respect for people, we need to use the pronouns that they feel most comfortable with. By respecting someone’s pronouns, we make feel people included and remind people that they’re loved and accepted for who they are. We can also show support to the LGBTQ+ community by being non-judgemental, avoiding assumptions and being accepting of everyone, challenging language misuse and reporting any homophobic or transphobic bullying to an adult.
5. Give everyone a blank name sticker, including adults and young leaders. Ask people to write down their name and pronouns if they feel comfortable to. This’ll help everyone understand how best to refer to each other.  
6. Remind everyone that providing space and opportunity for people to share their pronouns doesn’t mean that everyone feels comfortable or needs to share their pronouns. It should be optional. 

Watch the video 

1. If you’ve access to a device with the internet, play this ‘What are pronouns?’ video for the group.   
2. In the video they talked about how pronouns make an impact on people.  
3. Ask everyone how did they see using the right pronouns with people making a difference?  
4. Ask what steps can we take towards using the right pronouns for people? As members of Scouts, we have all made a promise to keep the Scout Law. This includes promising to be inclusive, kind, caring, friendly, considerate and respectful others.

Practising pronouns 

1. Tell everyone that being aware of people’s pronouns and making a conscious effort to speak to and about people in a respectful way can take practise.  
2. Explain that we can all make mistakes and might get it wrong sometimes. We just need to always try our best. 
3. Ask the group what they would do if they misgendered someone? Let a few people who feel comfortable to answer explain what they think. 
4. After some discussion, tell everyone that if they do make a mistake and accidentally use the wrong pronoun for someone, they should correct themselves and carry on with what they were saying.   
5. Explain that everyone makes mistakes, and its important to acknowledge your mistake by apologising and correcting yourself. This can be as simple as saying “sorry I mean...”. However, it’s not the responsibility of the person who was misgendered to address your feelings after misgendering them, and continuously apologising could make them feel uncomfortable.

Putting it into practise 

1. Tell everyone that they’re going to now practise getting these pronouns right. Ask everyone to get into small teams and distribute a pack of each set of cards to each group.  
2. Explain that there are animal cards and topic cards.  
3. Tell everyone there are three different animal cards, and each animal uses different pronouns. 
   • Sam the dog uses ‘he/him’ pronouns. 
   • Leslie the ladybird uses ‘she/her’ pronouns. 
   • Billy the butterfly is non-binary. For Billy, this means they aren't a boy or a girl. Billy uses ‘they/them’ pronouns.  
4. Tell everyone there are topic cards, which tell you an action, such as ‘ate a sandwich’. 
5. For each turn one person is going to be the ‘dealer’. This could be an adult volunteer or young leader to start with. The dealer should switch to a different person after each turn, so you may want to be in a circle to play the game.  
6. To play, the dealer will flip over an animal card and a topic card.  
7. Whoever says a sentence on the topic using the correct pronouns for the animal gets to keep the topic card. For example, if it was Billy and ‘ate a sandwich’, the answer would be ‘they ate a sandwich’. 
8. The person with the most topic cards at the end of the game wins.  
9. Once everyone’s finished playing, gather everyone back together. Ask everyone why they think it's important to respect and use people's pronouns.
10. Let a few people who are happy to explain their thoughts.