The pilot of an airliner that ditched in New York's Hudson River has been hailed a hero after all 155 passengers and crew were rescued. Crash Landing – A Miracle! Who can be a hero? Describe what you can see in this picture. Estimate how many people there are... Why do you think that Captain Sullenberger is a hero? How would you have been feeling had you been a passenger on the plane? Captain Sullenberger: ‘The Hero of the Hudson’

How did he land the Plane on Water! Try making a small model plane using card, paper and any other junk you can find. Make sure the wings are parallel and position it so that the nose is 12 0 from the surface it is on. Keep wheels up for smoother landing. If possible, burn fuel to aid buoyancy. Raise flaps and face wind to cut speed. Keep enough speed to maintain lift. Keep wings straight. Raise nose to 12 degrees and lower tail into water. Landing on water! Wow, what an amazing pilot. How did he do it? Hurray!

How did he get to the Hudson? Look carefully at the map. Can you follow the route the plane took before it landed? 1.15:26 local time: Flight 1549 takes off from New York's LaGuardia Airport. 2.15:27: Pilot Chesley Sullenberger reports birds hitting both engines and says he is returning to LaGuardia. 3.15:28: Plane banks to the left, but pilot decides he cannot reach LaGuardia or nearby Teterboro airport. 4.15:31: Pilot ditches plane in Hudson River. Use compass directions to describe its route. How long did it take from take off to the pilot ditching the plane?

Emergency! Airport and runway.... Pretend you are the captain of a plane. You are taking off in a north easterly direction. There is a bird strike. You are over River Valley Road. You need to land safely. Where will you go? How will you get there? How will you land safely?

Up2d8 maths Teacher Guide Due to the severe weather conditions during the earlier part of this year in the UK, the American news story about the emergency landing of a plane in the Hudson River by the pilot Captain Chelsey Sullenberger on Thursday 15 th January 2009 has not been covered in Up2d8 until now. It is a story still worth a focus, providing great opportunities for mathematics and which will still engage the children because it was such an amazing event. Many of the following activities can be adapted for the Foundation Stage as well as Key Stage 1. … continued on the next slide

1 st Spread: Crash Landing – A Miracle! Discuss what a miracle is and why this could be classed as one. Discuss heroes and why Captain Sullenberger has been named as one. Ask the children how they would feel if they had been a passenger on his plane. ●Make a tally of the children in your class who have flown in an aeroplane. ●For the FS and KS1 you could set up the role play area as an aeroplane or travel agent. The children could make their own passports and tickets with prices written onto them. ●You could discuss the different countries children have been to and locate them on a map or on Google Earth. Make a tally to show the countries they have visited and then ask them to transfer this information to a bar chart or pictogram. This could be adapted to make it accessible to FS. ●You could ask them to make paper aeroplanes and have a competition to see which fly the furthest by measuring the distances they travel. Measure these. ●You could discuss the problem that occurred causing the emergency landing with the children: bird strike, which is known to happen from time to time when planes are taking off and landing ( reports of bird strikes between 1990 and 2007). Birds can get sucked into the engines and cause damage which ultimately causes engine failure. This doesn’t happen when the planes are flying at full altitude because they are above the height that birds usually fly. Airport authorities around the world try to scare birds away - usually by driving around the airport in a truck with speakers, blasting out calls from birds of prey. Apparently a plane must be able to withstand a strike from an 8lb (3.6kg) bird. …continued on the next slide

1 st Spread: Crash Landing – A Miracle! continued… ●You could ask the children to estimate this weight and then measure it using sand or something similar. ●You could use this as an opportunity to practice a few conversions from imperial to metric weight and vice versa. On this occasion there was a flock of Canada geese, each bird weighing between 3 and 11lb. According to the Bird Strike Committee, a US-based organisation, a 12lb Canada goose struck by an aircraft at take-off would generate a force equivalent to a 1 000lb object being dropped from a height of 10ft (3m). You could describe this by likening the weight to that of a polar bear or nearly two upright pianos. You could ask questions involving mental calculation strategies e.g. 1 goose 9lbs, how much for five of the same weight? Look at the picture of the plane with the people and ask the children to estimate the number and then to describe how they could try to count them: suggest grouping them in tens. Discuss why this is difficult.

2 nd spread: How did he land the plane on water? Encourage the children to verbalise the three step instructions on how to land a plane on the water, discussing such phrases as ‘burn fuel to add buoyancy’. Ask questions such as how will burning fuel help, what is buoyancy? Provide junk for modelling and ask the children to make a model plane, include card for making wings. You could specify the planes’ dimensions so that they can practice measuring lengths accurately. Once they have, encourage them to ‘act out’ a landing on water scenario. If possible do this over a water tray or similar. Encourage them to practice measuring the correct angle size for the nose plane. You may wish to make a teaching input into angles, measuring and drawing using a protractor before they do this task. KS1 and FS children could investigate floating and sinking, exploring a range of materials.

3 rd spread: How did he get to the Hudson? Ask the children to look at the map and to describe the route the Captain Sullenberger took to land his plane in the Hudson River. Discuss why he couldn’t land it anywhere else. You may need to revise the eight compass directions (N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW) with them so that they can make accurate descriptions. For those that are able to, you might like to ask them to measure the angles of turn. You could discuss 24hr time and ask the children to work out the time difference from take- off to ditching the plane. You could then ask them to work out the se timings in other parts of the world.

4 th spread: Emergency! Encourage the children to use their thinking from the previous spreads: compass directions, landing instructions including the term parallel and the 12 degree angle for the nose position to describe how and where they could land their imaginary plane and why they chose where they did. They could draw their route and mark on where they would land the plane. In FS and KS1, think about who helps us in an emergency. How were people rescued? The children could use their knowledge gained from floating and sinking experiments to ‘rescue’ a play person from an island in the middle of the water tray.