How tall is that building?

We have a building at our school which is made of (visible) bricks. It also has three layers of identical windows and it has a drainpipe in sections.

If you have something similar, you will enjoy this one!

Take the children outside, give them the usual briefing on working together in teams, the importance of recording measurements as you go along etc, and then set the challenge of trying to find out how high the building is (without leaving the ground!).

Some will try counting bricks, some may try working out the height of one window and then multiply up, others may try measuring sections of drainpipe.

If the sun is shining, you can suggest to some of them that they might like to try using shadows to help them.

Each of these methods has signficant sources of error, so once everyone has done some measuring and calculating you can have lots of good debate about how to improve on accuracy and which might be the best method.

Then you can go out and measure all over again!

You can spend a full week on this one, measuring, discussing, re-measuring and then writing up findings using diagrams, calculations and written explanation.

A good summer term activity.

Ages 9-13    Printable materials (pdf) - 4 pages of teachers' notes and 4 pupil copymasters.