* Have students write a newspaper article giving geographic reasons why your community might or might not experience a tsunami.

* Traditional Japanese ideas about the source of gigantic waves that periodically come ashore and wreck Japanese coastal villages are found in the book The Big Wave by Pearl S. Buck. Have students read the book and discuss what the villagers believed caused the big wave. Encourage them to support their ideas with quotes that explain the attitudes of the villagers toward the overwhelming catastrophes that they experienced from killer waves from the sea.