Most importantly, continue working on your assessments.

Keep posting to last week's forum on assessment. 

Then set aside time (several hours) to "brainstorm" design ideas, ask questions, do research, and share ideas with fellow students. The more sketches, maps, and ideas you can work on the better.

Consider how you work best in remaining open, creative, and willing to try new things.

Your objective is to create a design proposal through a map. Sketch and present how you will achieve your goals through a schematic(conceptual) map. You will include (from your assessments) the site's key features along with the proposed design. Focus on the elements and systems you will implement. Skip small details until later. 

Some barriers to successful schematic design include:

1. Becoming attached to a design idea. Just because you really want a pond--or free-range llamas, if your soil can't hold water--or your pasture does not provide enough forage, your desires will have to confront the evidence in your assessments. 
2. Being afraid to make a mess. Have plenty of tracing paper available and use it. Display good and bad drafts around the room. Thumb through permaculture principles and look for examples in your sketches. Go for big picture ideas, connections, and patterns.
3. Focusing too much on details and not the whole system. Bill Mollison was known for saying "its not about the number of elements in a system, but the connections between elements."

Don't plan for a clean final schematic this week. Just get a sketch done that is clear enough to read and demonstrate your ideas. You will clean up and finalize the schematic map before submitting your portfolio for certification.