Particularly for those living in areas phone to earthquakes, having an earthquake preparation plan is essential. As a teacher, it's important for your students to be aware of your school's earthquake preparation plan and to follow or implement practice drills to ensure that students fully understand what to do to in case an actual earthquake occurs.
Use visual examples whenever possible to demonstrate why earthquakes happen. For example, use a map of the earth showing the various fault lines and tectonic plates and how different types of movement between these plates, such as lateral versus subduction, can cause different types of quakes.
A portion of any lesson on earthquakes should include an overview of the history of earthquakes and when the earliest earthquakes were documented. For example, the ancient Chinese created the very first seismographs. Show how modern geological technology is assisting monitoring agencies in predicting, in a very approximate way, when, where and to what severity an earthquake can occur. Use videos and interactive applications to further engage students in learning about earthquakes. A documentary about great earthquakes of the past would be enlightening.
While you may not be able to convince a seismologist to give a lecture on earthquakes, you may be able to convince a meteorologist from a local news organization to visit your classroom to provide information on and answer questions about earthquakes. Another idea is to invite a person who survived a major earthquake to talk about the experience.