Reflections on a summer past

Back-to-school day is nearly there - Monday is rapidly approaching as I look at what I've done (and not done) so far.

I've successfully moved to Compiègne where I'm ready to welcome a lot of different students. Here are my future classes:

• three 10th grade groups
• one STMG 11th grade
• two 12th grade groups
• one literature 12th grade

One positive change from my last post is that there are more computer labs than the principal first told me. Here however, the teaching is different from what I've experienced before. English classes are "skill-oriented", if I may call them so.

It means that the year is divided into 3 main periods. One for each skill the students are supposed to work on. For the first period, for instance, I have to teach listening comprehension strategies as much as I can. Then it will be written comprehension and finally written expression. Oral expression is supposed to be worked on throughout the year. Each period ends with a test for all classes to assess student performance.

I find it hard to reconcile these rules with the idea of letting students some choice over their learning experience. I already know I'll be tweaking the rules. I cannot have full-on PBL projects, but at least I'll let students carry out mini-PBL projects at the end of every sequence.
Here are the titles for my tenth grades projects:

 For Sequence 2. Britishness, I'll have student research the British school system on their own, and from the lessons on different aspects of Britishness and their own research they will have to create a short film about British students welcoming a foreigner in their school. I adapted the project from Don Doehla here: http://pbl-wl.wikispaces.com/Project+ideas+for+intermediate.

I'm still working on the other grades - my first topics are ready but not everything. So there will be more explanations about these later.

I went to my new high school this morning: it was teeming with people, busy speaking, shuffling administrative papers and bringing new furniture in. I could not help feeling excited about next week and the new life ahead of me. I am going back to lesson planning now, even more motivated by the thought of new students to teach, new colleagues to meet and the fresh school year about to begin.