Gail force and sun effects

Lesson 2 – 15 minutes

Understand how weather can affect both the beach environment and beach users.
Identify natural and man-made causes of erosion and their impact of the beach environment.
Identify the consequences of not being SunSmart.
Identify what skin cancer is and what causes it.

Ask the following questions to generate a discussion on weather:

What is weather? (it’s a description of what’s happening with the air, sun, rain and wind at any given time).
What type of weather do we get in this part of the country?
How can the weather affect the role of lifesavers at the beach? (numbers of people i.e. sunny = more, wet = less cold water, more chance of people getting cold, large waves, more dangerous; storms, put dangerous debris into the water etc).
How can we be prepared for different weather conditions? (sun protection, wet weather equipment, appropriate warning signage etc).

Take the participants on to the beach, have them face the water and describe what the waves look like. Ask participants:

Describe both to them: (dumping waves will curl over and dump forcefully, gentle waves will spill slowly).

Ask the participants to pick up a handful of sand and study it in detail in their hands.
Ask them to describe what they find in the sand or what they think its made of? (may identify broken shells, crab fragments, purples fragments from barnacles etc).
Have the participants open their fingers and let the sand drop to the beach. While they are doing this mention how easy sand is to move and manipulate on a beach (as easy as it is to fall through their fingers).

Ask the participants the following questions:

What impact might waves have on the beach/dune environment? _(heavy dumping waves – take/erode sand from the beach; gentle spilling waves – return the sand to the beach).
Can you see any signs of erosion on the beach? _(look for eroded rock platforms or cliff faces, eroded dunes, areas of steep beach, etc).
Can you think of any other ways erosion can be sued? _(wind shapes rocks and cliffs, etc.) human development, walking over dines, etc).
What impact do humans have on the coast/sand dunes .
Finish the lesson by discussing ways in which we can protect our coastline/sand dunes. (Don’t walk over sand dunes, join a dune care group, fence off dunes, don’t build so close to beach etc)

Recall the SunSmart Guidelines – Slip, Slop, Slap, Seek, Slide _(or your state equivalent slogan).
Discuss with the participants the consequences of not being SunSmart _(get burnt, skin cancer, melanoma etc).

Ask the participants if they have any stories about sunburn and skin cancer that they would like to share with the group.
Use these stories to highlight the impact of skin cancer on the lives of people and draw the stories back to the SunSmart Guidelines.