This is an approach for children who find producing sentences difficult.
It uses colours to identify different parts of a sentence.
This approach supports children to understand a range of question words and to build grammatically correct sentences.
The parts of the sentence are colour coded like this:
Who? (orange) A person, character or animal
What Doing? (yellow) A verb or action word e.g. ‘running’, ‘eating’, ‘sleeping’
What? (green) An object e.g. ‘apple’, ‘car’
Where? (blue) A location or place e.g. ‘the park’, ‘outside’, the cinema’
When? (brown) Time, part of day or special occasion e.g. ‘1pm’ ‘night’, ‘birthday’
How to use Colourful Semantics:
When looking at picture books, watching TV or while outside ask “who?” “what doing?” “where?” and “when” questions. For example: Who is riding their bike? What is that boy doing? What is he cooking? Where are they in this picture? When do you think this picture was taken?
Use the colourful semantics strip to help build sentences (click on ‘download as PDF’ above). Examples:
Click on ‘download this activity’ above to download a worksheet for your child to colour in.
Reference:
Bryan A (1997) Colourful semantics. In: Chiat S, Law J, and Marshall J (eds) Language disorders in children and adults: psycholinguistic approaches to therapy. London: Whurr, 143–61
