Music and Maths

I love music, and every opportunity I can get it into my lessons I will. I have a theme on Mondays in school which is Music Mondays, where we will always have a music based starter activity, and if the class are well behaved, I will play music for them during the activities in the lesson.

I am pretty up to date with music as I do a variety of DJing in my own time, and tend to play stuff the students will like. I always let them request songs and make a conscious effort to play them, particularly if I haven't heard of the act before. I find that I have bonded with many previously unreachable students by just getting a glimpse of what music tastes they have.

To help with that, I created some Maths & Music starters. Now, I must point out that these are almost identical to Mr Collins' MathsDjing , and honestly only found that these existed after I had done about six of mine. I've therefore been reluctant to post about them, but I do feel that it is good to have variety and it may just be a slightly different combination to his excellent work on this.

The idea is simple, add up every number you hear in the mashup of songs. Explain that the word 'to' and 'for' are not numbers, and that 1999 is '19' and '99' because that's how you sing it. They don't say 'one thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine', and if Prince did, I doubt it would have been quite as successful.

Here are my links to the starters:


Maths Music Starters


My favourite one is the joke one - after doing about six of these, then you can play this one. Don't expect an answer, just watch the expressions on the faces of the students!

I also use the Chris Moyles Quiz Night Music questions too, and normally alternate week on week between the two ideas. If anyone has other music based starter activities, I'm all ears!

I will add more every few months so check back and bookmark this page!