The Height of a Tree

It is February and I am teaching the measurement of length in Class 6 of the Government School, Malakhedi. Today, I wanted to do some interesting measurement activity with the children. During my school visits, I had observed that most of the children from the primary classes were using their scale only to draw straight lines, they had difficulties in measuring length with it. In the higher classes, the children were familiar with the common units of measuring length: metre, centimetre and kilometre. The banyan tree was just in front of us. A few children asked to measure the height of this tree. We could not measure the height of this banyan tree by using a scale or inch tape, as it was very high. The challenge was to find the height of this tree - without climbing on it. So, the question was- how can we measure the height? We discussed some ideas together. Here, in this article, I am trying to share the entire process of this activity