GRADE 5 STORMY STORIES

Your Mission Use your geography expertise to sort out the stories of four kids caught in natural disasters.

Briefing   Picture this: You're the star reporter at a Web site called Disasterama.com. Each day millions of eager readers hit your site for stories about people who've faced the forces of nature.  Your latest assignment is to give a kid's-eye view of living through a catastrophe. You've just finished four interesting interviews when you have a disaster of your own. For reasons known only to itself, your computer merges and jumbles your files. Result: a mess.

Luckily, you do recall the stars of your stories:

• Susan lives in Kearney , Nebraska .

• Juanita lives in San Pedro , Costa Rica .

• Johnny lives in Discovery Bay , Jamaica .

• Takeshi lives in Tokyo , Japan .

With your sharp eye and mind, you should be able to turn the chaos back into four distinct sets of notes so you can write your article. Of course, it might help to check the disaster dossier to learn about different forces of natures and the places they affect.

All set? Check out the jumbled files and see if you can straighten them out. Use the clues from each interview to figure out what kind of disaster each kid survived. Then, if you're feeling ambitious, you could transform the notes into a news story. Good luck!

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