Shocking. Positively Shocking!

In Grade 10 English this past month, we were able to choose from several genre units to replace our typical English class for May. One of the options was the Ian Fleming unit, taught by Mr Collis, which focussed on the James Bond novels and movie adaptations.  The course consisted of watching the best and the worst parts of the movies, making a podcast debating if the James Bond genre unit should even exist, going on a secret mission, and participating in the Bond Olympics. We also read passages of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels and short stories and compared and contrasted them with the movie versions. We could view the James Bond series not only as fun and famous but also as “a cultural barometer” as Mr. Collis always called it.  For the final project, we had three options. The first was making plot outline for our own Bond movie by using the Bond formula. The option was to write your own chapter of a lost Bond novel. The option was creating and performing a scene of a Bond movie. It was interesting to go into so much detail when learning about the James Bond series through different aspects which I had never considered when watching the blockbuster movies. I thought it was “positively shocking” that there was so much more to learn about James Bond than meets the eye. This course, in my opinion, was the perfect combination of fun and education. My perspective of the James Bond series has been permanently altered and I am glad to have taken this course. Yuma K, Allard ’19