Circus Club? No--Book Club!

  One morning last week, students took turns hanging from wide silk ribbons  and a lyra in the Increase Miller Elementary School gym.

They were the fifth grade book club (plus a few siblings) exploring the context of their most recent book, Circus Mirandus by Cassie Beasley. 

The  students were guided by Mrs. Hoffman, the school librarian, who is also an aerial artist.

Not your average book club

Book Clubs Are Fun!


 Book club is open to whoever would like to sign up for an enrichment activity. Fifteen fourth graders and thirteen fifth graders participated this year.

“I pick current, highly engaging children's literature selections that I know the students will enjoy reading and discussing,” said Mrs. Hoffman. “One of the highlights of Increase Miller's book club are the authentic, relevant, unique experiences that are paired with each book making them come alive!”

Mrs. Hoffman runs a book club for both the fourth and fifth grade students. Each group reads the assigned book on their own time, meets once for the typical book discussion, then again for a follow up meeting where they do a project based activity loosely related to the book.

The first book the fourth grade read was A Handful of Stars by Cynthia Lord, and the first fifth grade book was Rain Reign by Ann M. Martin. Both of these books center around a theme of the importance of animals in our lives, as well as our responsibility to care for animals in need. The grades  combined for two follow-up meetings where they organized and ran a toy drive to benefit the animals at the Putnam County Humane Society. They collected almost 100 toys to donate.

 The second book the fourth grade read was Loot by Jude Watson and the fifth grade read Circus Mirandus by Cassie Beasley. The grades did the circus activity separately since so many students signed up.