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Maths enrichment

This afternoon, some children from across the school came together to solve a maths problem. We explored different ways of calculating the height of a diseased tree within the school grounds to ensure when chopping it at the base it didn’t hit the school. The children were very creative with their suggestions and we found two different methods to estimate the height of the tree.

One method involved measuring the distance between the tree and the school, then walking whilst looking between our legs to identify when we could see the top of the tree. We then stopped and our partners measured the distance from the tree to our positions with a trundle wheel. We discussed the limitations to this method such as it depended on how flexible we were.

The second method involved scaling, we used a smaller tree and a tall child to estimate the height of the small tree to scale this up to the taller tree.  Finally, the children established that the tree would not hit the school building when being chopped at the base.

​**Please note there are no 'truly diseased' trees in the school ground​**