Using Hidden City in Your Classroom

Hidden City highlights nature that can be found in urban areas of the Northeastern United States. There are poems about common birds, mammals, insects, plants, and more. Each poem focuses on something that a child could observe themselves, if they were in the right place at the right time. The backmatter of the book highlights fun scientific facts about each species.

Here are some ideas for ways to use Hidden City in your classroom:

• Read a poem from Hidden City when you teach a lesson that touches on one of the topics in the poems (bats, trees, owls, raccoons, growing plants, habitat, food webs, etc.).

• Use poems from Hidden City as example texts when teaching students to analyze and identify important details.

• Have kids act out poems from Hidden City to better understand how different species interact with each other and their environment. (“Hunting Lesson” is a popular one for this!)

• Use Hidden City as a mentor text, and encourage students to write a poem about nature near their home.

• Read Hidden City as a class, and then go outside to the playground or another nearby nature area. Use my “Writing List Poems from Observation” PDF worksheet to help kids write a poem and sharpen their ability to notice and communicate details.