What is Colourful Semantics?
- 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 as PDF’ 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.
