This assignment will provide an opportunity for you to tailor your learning to those aspects of being a group member and group leader that you wish to enhance.  Some of these goals will be readily obvious and conscious to you, while others will be more unconscious or preconscious and will become more apparent as you go through the experiences in the unit/group.  For example you may want to understand and change the way you deal with power in groups, or the way you manage emotion or simply your level of participation (be it too much or not enough for the rest of the group).  All of these goals rely upon your own personal reflection, a skill that is essential for psychologists to practice successfully.  Feedback from group members may help you obtain a better understanding of what your goals should be and now you work on these goals.  Your four reflections following each day we meet as a group will a type of learning journal where you will honestly determine your learning goals and assess your progress towards those goals, as well as the challenges for the next day of the group experience.  

Four chapters have been identified in the textbook that will be used for these reflections on the discussion board where students will be encouraged to comment. 

You will be required to lead the class in one or two group sessions, depending on the size of the class.  Develop these sessions and lead the class group for a period of approximately one hour to 90 minutes.  The sessions may be on any particular topic, but should take into consideration the stage that the group is at.  It is a good idea to link consecutive group experiences with the one that precedes it in order to build continuity.  If you like, you may even have a task that you want participants to complete prior to or following your session.  You may find the textbook useful here as it is organised around the stages of the group.  Otherwise, you may use any exercise that sparks your interest.  (In the past we have had sessions focusing on values, making process comments, dancing, poetry, drawing, beginning groups, ending groups)  Thus, the content is not as important as the process of how the session takes place.  Remember if you use an existing exercise you must contextualize it within an overarching framework of a topic you wish to present.  In other words, the task is not the point of the experience, it is how you use that task to further group members’ learning about themselves.  All criteria should be addressed in the sessions each of you lead, regardless of the topic selected.  Special attention should be placed on the process, by your use of process comments throughout your session. Finally, you will need to write up the session plan, as well as an evaluation of it.