Here are the lyrics for our version of We are the champions.

3x lyrics

We haven’t yet got around to recording this with the band.  It’s a very challenging song to play, and we ran out of time to rehearse it before the last recording session.  It’s still in the pipeline and we hope to record it next school year.

Here is the rehearsal file for the song, exported from Sibelius.

3x Champions (Dm) – rehearsal file

This was one for the teachers and parents!  It never quite captured the children’s imagination.  Maybe if we had done this as the first song then they would have got into it more, but they’ve been spoilt by doing loads of current songs that they know really well, so it was a hard sell.

Here are the lyrics for Roar.  This was written by some of year 6 at St Michaels C of E junior school in Twerton, Bath.  A few of the lines were edited and improved by the whole school in an assembly.  This was another song where I had very little to do with the output.

11x Roar – lyrics

Here is the final version of the song.  As with the 2x table song, this features years 3, 4 and 6 from St Michaels and the Kings Oak year 12 band

Roar (11x table)

Here is the rehearsal file for the song, exported from Sibelius.

Roar (Bb)

Here are the lyrics for I Knew You Could Double, our version of the Taylor Swift classic

2x lyrics

Here is the final version of the song, featuring years 3, 4 and 6 from St Michaels C of E Junior school in Twerton, Bath.  The band is the same group of year 12 musicians from Kings Oak, who had worked with Summerhill on the other songs on this site

I knew you could double

Here is the rehearsal file for the song, exported from Sibelius.

I knew you could double (F#)

The vocals are really fast all the way through.  This is fine in verse 1, when the children are simply singing the times tables.  But I got a bit ambitious in verse 2 and tried to get them to sing about doubling higher numbers (2 x 16 = 32).  You’ll be able to hear yourself – this doesn’t really work.  The children stumble over a lot of the words.

In hindsight I would either have spent some time working with the teachers to embed this into the relevant lessons on doubling, and using the opportunity to rehearse the song harder, or I would have just got the children to sing verse 1 twice.

Of course it’s your call how you choose to do this!  If you try any other ideas please blog back and let us know about it.

The bridge of the 4 times table song (What does the four say) sets the children a challenge.  The lyrics are:

The secret of the fours

Is when you look at the units

They go 4-8-2-6-0

As far as you can go

You can do the same

With some other times tables

Which ones can you find?

I have just set this as an “optional” challenge (with bonus league table points for the best investigations) to an entire junior school, from year 3 to year 6.  Attached is the printout that I gave the children, with various differentiated suggestions for challenges, although I’m happy for them to ignore my ideas and take it any way they like.

Challenge

Within minutes, some of the year 6’s were coming up with their own investigations.  One girl commented to me that if you look at 4-8-2-6-0 backwards it reads 6-2-8-4-0, which is the pattern of units in the 6 times table.  I asked her to investigate why that is the case, and to see if she can find other pairs of times tables where the same thing happens.  Another boy started talking about how with the 9 times table the tens go up and the units go down.  I asked him to investigate why, and to try out other times tables to see what the pattern is there.  I’m hoping both will notice the role played by number bonds, without too much prompting from me.

I will blog again with the results of their investigations.

Here is the lyrics file for Move, a song by Little Mix which was a hit at the end of 2013.

I had absolutely nothing to do with this!  A group of year 6 girls wrote the entire song.  I actually felt that it wouldn’t work because there were too many words, moving too fast, and it was too electronic to play live.  How wrong was I?  The girls wrote an amazing song, fitted in the times table in a very catchy way, and it was the band’s favourite tune to play.

5x Move lyrics

Here is the final version of the song, with the secondary school band performing.

Move (5 times table)

Here is the rehearsal file for the song, exported from Sibelius.  We decided to double the chorus (“1, 1 times 5 is 5…”) so I’m afraid this file is out of sync with the lyrics and the final version of the song.  On this file the first chorus is only half the length.  Hope this makes sense!

5x Move – rehearsal file

Here is the lyrics file for What does the fox say.  This was based on an idea from a group of year 5 children.

4x Fox lyrics

Here is the final version of the song, with the secondary school band performing.

What does the Four say

Here is the rehearsal file for the song, exported from Sibelius.  We decided to add the Bridge (“the secret of the fours”) after I had put together this file so it is on the final recording above and in the lyrics file, but not this rehearsal file.

4x What does the fox say – rehearsal file

Here is the lyrics file for Happy.  Lots of children were persuading me to do this song, which had been a massive hit over the previous few months, although it was early days in the project so I was still writing the lyrics.

6x Happy lyrics

Here is the final version of the song, with the secondary school band performing.

Happy (count along in 6)

Here is the rehearsal file for the song, exported from Sibelius.  We decided to add the bridge (“Bring me down”) after I had put together this file, so it appears in the lyrics and the final version above, but not this rehearsal file.  We decided to cut the high “Happy happy happy happy” bit after trying it a few times and being deafened by the cacophony!!

6x Happy – rehearsal file

Here is the lyrics file for Rather Be.  Most of these words came from a group of Year 5 children, based on the song which was number 1 at the time.

9x Rather be lyrics

Here is the final version of the song, with the secondary school band performing.

Rather sing (9 times table)

Here is the rehearsal file for the song, exported from Sibelius.

9x Rather be – rehearsal file

Here is the lyrics file for Don’t Stop Believing.  The __  __ gaps at the start of each line are to indicate the rests – in other words, how many beats to be silent before starting to sing the line.

8x Don’t stop believing lyrics

Here is the final version of the song, with the secondary school band performing.

Don’t Stop Believing (8 times table)

Here is the rehearsal file for the song, exported from Sibelius.

8x Don’t stop believing – rehearsal file

Here is the lyrics file for Mamma Mia.

7x Mamma mia lyrics

Here is the final version of the song, with the secondary school band performing.

Mamma mia (7 times table)

Here is the rehearsal file for the song, exported from Sibelius.  The singers start at about 0:14.

7x Mamma mia – rehearsal file