Lachlan Pearce

During this semester at school I have been doing a new elective called Spec basketball. As you could probably tell from the name, its a class dedicated to learning and developing basketball skills which improves our playing ability. I have learnt a lot of news skills for both my defence and offence which I now use in actual basketball games. Every Wednesday morning our spec basketball class goes to Willetton basketball centre to better develop our basketball skills and to play 5v5 against eachother.

Offence

Throughout this subject I have been taught how to improve my jump shot to make my shots a lot more accurate. At the start of the season I was very unconfident when shooting the ball as my shots wouldn’t go in due to my bad jump shot form, now that I have improved my jump shot I can score most of my points from outside of the paint and even from the 3 point line. I have also learnt how to get open with the ball to get easy open layups with the help on my improved dribbling ability, and I now know how to set an effect screen which improves my teammates and myself on the court.

Defence

The new defence structures that I learnt throughout this subject really benefits my team and myself and the court. One of the most effective defences basketball structures that learnt was shell drill. Shell drill is where your whole team on defence lines up facing their opponent, each time the ball is passed around by the other team you change your stance and get in position for help defence if it is needed. I also learnt how to keep up with my player when running down the court or when moving side to side.

Player Profile

Name	Lachlan Pearce
Weight	60kg
Height	5’8
Gender	Male
Position	Small forward
Number
D.O.B	05/07/2006

Highlight

In term 2 before I had started the Muir subject, I went to a orienteering competition for school which I came last in as I didn’t know what I was doing. Now that I have been learning how to orienteer in Muir I can safely say that I wouldn’t come last in that competition and I might even be able to win. Muir has taught me lots of skills that will help me when I go camping or snorkelling. The capability that I used during orienteering was problem solving as I had to figure out where to go from question and maps.

Snorkelling, I have learnt new tips and tricks with snorkelling throughout this subject which benefited my experience in Rottnest and just snorkelling in general. Before I started this subject I did not know how to duck dive underwater without swallowing lots of sea water, now I can successfully duck dive perfectly without any sea water entering my mouth. I can also release water that fills up in my goggles 456underwater which was very helpful when I was snorkelling. The capability I used during snorkelling in this subject was resilient as getting in the cold water and staying in it for 20 minutes at a time was very exhausting and freezing.

Camp, The Rottnest camp was very fun and even though it was only for 2 days I would say its one of the best camps I’ve been on. When we first arrived on the island we walked from the ferry to little Parakeet bay which is where we had our first snorkel. The water was cold even though I was wearing a wetsuit but it was nice swimming around the reefs and seeing the fish in the water. After that we walked to our campsite where we set up our tents and got ready for the amazing race around Rottnest. The amazing race had questions about Rottnest that we had find the answers to by going to each location. When we got back to the campsite we played sports on the oval till the dinner was ready. For dinner we had a barbeque which was very delicious as I was starving from barely eating all day. At 9:00pm we were in our tents ready for bed, and ready for our big day tomorrow. In the morning we packed up our tents and walked to the Basin for another snorkel. In my opinion the water was colder at the Basin but there were a lot more fish to look at and the reef looked nicer as well. The capability I used when I was on the Rottnest camp was collaboration as everything we did was in a group such as, the amazing race and snorkelling partners.

Leave no trace has been implemented into Australia as of recently, leave no trace is when you clean up your camp site in the bush/environment to make sure your leaving it the same way you found it. Ways that you can leave no trace at a camp site is by cleaning up all your rubbish from food you may have cooked, and making sure you destroy and bury your fire that you made. Doing this helps the environment and reduces the harm we are doing to our beautiful bushland. On Rottnest we did an emu-bob at each location that we stayed to make sure we collected all the rubbish we left and also rubbish that the public may have left as well.

The outdoor education program that I recently took part in was a very great experience in the Dwellingup bush. I did three different activities with my classmates, the activities were kayaking, bush cooking, and tree tops adventures. These activities were the ones our class had been focusing on during our lessons to help improve our skills before going on camp. The bus trip to Dwellingup took roughly 2 hours but there was multiple road works which helped to delay our arrival and bring up problems from moving to different activities.

The first activity that my group did on camp was kayaking, we didn’t have much time on the water as the road works delayed our arrival at the kayaking spot. The water was very cold that we’re kayaking in but fortunately I didn’t fall in, I did get splashed though when I seal launched from the stairs into the water. The capability I used in the kayaking was effective communication as we had to all communicate to get the most value out of the minimum amount of time we had to kayak.

The second activity we did was bush cooking. We had to make a wood set up for our fire in a campsite fireplace. My group cooked a sausage sizzle on the metal plate above the fire, we also cooked onions do go with the sausages. Overall, the meal we made was very scrumptious and I will make it again if I go camping. The capability that I used during the bush cooking was teamwork as all of us boys had to work together to prepare and cook the food. Each of us played a role in making the food for example cutting, cooking, cleaning up.

The last activity we did was tree top adventure. Tree top adventure is an obstacle in the trees and there were different levels of obstacles depending on our age and skill levels. Mitchell and I did the hardest levels at the start to prove how alpha we are, it was very challenging, but we got through it. The capabilities we used was resilience as I had to not give up during the obstacle course because there was no way down beside the end once you were up there.

My name is Lachlan Pearce and I’m currently fifteen, I go All Saints College which is located in Perth. I’m in year 10 and I have many interest such as basketball, football: I play football for the Palmyra Demons and I have been playing there ever since I was six. I have also started to go to the gym as I need to get bigger for footy season if I want a chance to make a good team. Most of my interests are sport related if you couldn’t guess. Most of my skills are physical attributes, such as my speed, jumping ability, and stamina. All these skills help to increase my sporting ability.

My values are respect, empathy and resilience. I chose these values as they are what I use in everyday life and most they are important to me. I believe that we should respect everyone as we don’t know what they are going through and if everyone respected each other the world would be a better place, this also relates with empathy. I use resilience in everyday life as I don’t like to give up.

My favourite subject that I’m studying right now is most likely Spec PE, I enjoy this as I have a good group of friends in this class with me and we get to play lots of sport and we go to the gym regularly during class. I don’t know what I’m going to be studying next year, I will either do ATAR or TAFE. If I chose to do TAFE I will study to be a electrician as some of my family members are electricians up North. I would also like to get my coaching certificate to open new Job opportunities for me in the future.

My school recently held a futures day to give us students ideas on what subjects and pathways we should choose for year 11 and 12. The school invited old saint students to this futures day to give us ideas as they all have been doing alright after schooling. A week later I had to choose my ATARs, I was very surprised by the ATAR I chose as I didn’t think I was going to be doing ATAR at the start of the year. The ATAR I chose are: maths apps, English, physical education studies, economics, accounting & finances, and I also chose outdoor education but this isn’t an ATAR.

My group and I were tasked to make a building out of spaghetti and blu-tack which had to withstand a simulated 3.5 earthquake for 10 seconds. The building had to be at least sixty centimetres tall and maximum base size of thirty-by-thirty centimetres. For our build, we were given sixty dollars to buy the materials. The only materials allowed in our build were spaghetti and blu-tak which was priced at one dollar per ten centimetres of spaghetti and one dollar per one gram of blu-tack. In the visual presentation that my group made we put photos for our first design to our final design, we added in the sketches and plans for each model. We also put the design techniques that are used in actual buildings around the world in the presentation.

The first model that we made was very heavy in the centre, this caused it to break also immediately during the simulated shake test. After our failed first design we decided to research more thoroughly throughout the internet for stronger building techniques. This is where we found the uses of triangles in our build, triangles distribute force equally through the structure. Another problem we encountered was the spaghetti always breaks when we were handling it on our first design, the way we improved ourselves with this problem on our second design was that we were a lot more careful when handling it.

I contributed to my group by building all the designs and working out if our design was within the sixty-dollar budget. I also researched techniques in buildings that are used to prevent earthquakes from destroying them. Our group worked very well and efficient throughout this assignment, we were able to finish our presentation and model at a fast rate as we set out different jobs/roles for each group member. This made sure everyone in the group was doing things productively.