Activity
Engage
As students enter the room, have the following question on the board for them to answer.
“ Everyday there are earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, droughts, and more. Where do you think these events occur?” Take a few minutes to share student answer. Do not correct any misconceptions, as these will be addressed during the lesson.

Explore
Ask the class to define the following terms: longitude, latitude, earthquake, volcano, drought, flood, hurricane, and tornado.

Once students agree on the definitions of the terms tell students that today they will be using Cartesian coordinates to plot the locations of several major natural disasters. They will place their overhead on top of the coordinate graph and plot the disasters. In place of North and East, positive numbers are used. In place of South and West, negative numbers are use data sheets to groups and allow them time to plot the list of disasters you have provided them.

Pass out data sheets and overheads and allow students sufficient time to plot their assigned disasters.

Explain
After the plotting is complete, but before the groups come back together ask the students to look for trends they see in their data. Was their country directly affected? How? Remind students to save this information as this will be a component of their major project.

Expand
Have students think about nearby countries and trade partners. How might the natural disasters in other countries affect their county?

Evaluate
Are students able to correctly determine if their country was directly affected by a natural disaster?
Can students correctly plot disasters?