Misheard Lyrics

On the way to school drop off in the morning my radio station of choice (and hence the radio station of choice for my children) is the Christian O’Connell show on Gold 104.3. For those of you not familiar with this radio station, the genre of songs it plays could be described as “old time classics”... think: The Beatles, Bruce Springstein, The Killers, Coldplay, U2 etc. (Yes, I know, some of them I wouldn’t describe as ‘old’ either!).

I particularly enjoy when songs from the very first cassette tape I ever owned- ‘Thru the Roof 83’ are played (I still have this tape- although I have no where to play it!). Songs like 'Rain' by Dragon are timeless!

One of the weekly segments on the Christian O’Connell show is ‘Misheard Lyrics’. Every week I look forward to this segment. Basically, if you have misheard the lyrics to a song, you can send in an entry and see if Christian and the team agree with your ‘misheardness’.

It makes me laugh every week mostly because I can relate as I have a habit of mishearing lyrics.

This competition is so in my wheelhouse, that earlier this year I submitted my very own 'misheard lyrics' entry...

It all started on the summer holidays

when we were holidaying in Queensland and decided to drive and then walk to the summit of Mount Coolum in Queensland (stunning, very steep walk, which I highly recommend!).

We were in the car on the way when the song titled "What it is" by Doechii came on the radio.

I said to my husband "This song has a funny line about Grandmas".

He looked perplexed, and then said "is this another one of your misheard lyrics?"

Silence suddenly came over the car as all 6 of us tuned in to listen extra carefully to the song.

I was still very confident the line was  "Ooh, we go crazy like Grandma"

But my husband was just as confident that the actual line was "Ooh, we go crazy like Rambo"

It was a Mexican stand-off!

We each had the opportunity to plead our case to the panel of 4 young judges.

My argument was "your line doesn't even make sense! What has Rambo got to do with going crazy?"

My husband laughed and said "have you ever seen Rambo?"

I said "no"

He said, "well Rambo definitely goes crazy in the film- so the line actually does make sense!

This piece of information did not help my case!

Sensibly the 4 person independent jury decided the best way to settle the argument was to search for the lyrics on Google.

Unfortunately this didn't end well for me, and my case was thrown out of the courtroom in a hail of laughter. My punishment was that I had to immediately write to Christian O'Connell and enter this in the 'misheard lyrics' competition.

Which I did.

A couple of weeks later my entry appeared on the show (you can hear my entry here.)

This scenario made my think of the Professional Developments sessions I facilitate.

More often than not I am working with the whole staff from a school or a few schools. I love this because it means that everyone is in the room and listening the same message. This allows us to take important steps towards a whole school approach to maths. 

BUT, while everyone listens the same message. I must remember that not everyone hears the same message. 

Within each school there is a huge variety of knowledge, experience, mindsets and attitudes. People have told me that they have felt physically ill in the lead up to my PD day, knowing that we will be looking at 'maths' (They are usually telling me this after the day, sharing how much their view has changed over the day- so that is positive!). 

We all know how important prior knowledge is. David Ausubel's research explains that all meaning is interpreted through our existing knowledge. This means that every participant in my PD's will take away a different message from the session. Some will forget a great deal of it, as their brain will not have had the experiences and built the anchors required to connect and assimilate the knowledge. Others will take away a great deal as they have the prior knowledge to make sense of the content.

This is exactly the same in our maths classroom.

We cannot know what experiences our students bring with them to the class. So we cannot guarantee that everyone will take away the same message or learning.

If we think back to the Doechii song. I had not seen Rambo, so did not have the prior knowledge to make a connection with the idea of him going 'crazy'. The only logical  connection my brain could make was 'going crazy like Grandma' (not that I know any crazy Grandmas!) 

So this week I encourage you to think about the prior knowledge your students require to be able to make connections with the content you are teaching. For example, before you teach the subtraction or addition formal algorithm, do students understand how to rename? (because we are actually not carrying/borrowing/trading- we are renaming the numbers to make them easier to work with).

Perhaps before you start teaching you might check-in to see if this knowledge is in place, and this may help to ensure that there are less 'misheard lyrics' in your class! 

Have a great week!

Ange🎓🎲

 P.S. You can download the PDF version of this blog to print or share with colleagues here.