What is Colourful Semantics and how can I use it at home with my child?

What is Colourful Semantics?

Colourful Semantics is the brainchild of Alison Bryan, a speech and language specialist based in the UK. It uses colour to unlock a deeper understanding of sentence structure, grammar and language. Each element of a sentence is given a different code to provide a visual cue to understanding a word’s function within a sentence, its (semantic) meaning and its relationship with other words.

In this blog, we are going to explore how using the Colourful Semantics approach can support your child’s learning at home and how to get started.

What is Colourful Semantics?

As described above, Colourful Semantics is an approach to unlocking language. It is especially useful for children with SEND that may struggle with writing sentences as it allocates each part of a sentence a colour which can help children build sentences.

Each element of a sentence has an allocated colour. A subject is orange, a verb is yellow and so on.

Here is the full list:

subjects - ‘who’ card = orange

verbs - ‘what doing’ card = yellow

object - ‘what’ card = green

adverb - ‘where’ card = blue

adverb - ‘when’ card = brown

to whom - ‘to whom’ card = pink

adjective - ‘what like’ card = white cloud

clause or phrase - ‘why’ card = purple

A child would have a selection of cards for each element. So, they might have 20 different subject cards and 20 different verb cards to choose from and so on. Each card also has a symbol (Makaton or Widgit symbols) depicting the word's meaning.

The approach also makes use of a coloured sentence frame. This helps the child know which order to put the words in to make a coherent sentence. The child selects a coloured card and places it on its matching square in the sentence. Here’s an example:

As the child progresses, more sentence elements can be added to make the sentence more complex. Like this:

You can see, that the complexity of the sentence is increasing as we extend the sentence.

Note: Velcro is often used to attach the word cards to the sentence frame - you find lots of support on this on Pinterest.

You can find more resources on TES.

What are the benefits of using Colourful Semantics?

There are many benefits to using Colourful Semantics, whether your child has SEND or not. Some of the benefits include:

• Improves vocabulary - if you want to help your child learn a new word, print it on a coloured piece of card and then put it into a sentence frame. This will help the meaning to stick in your child’s memory and make the word more meaningful.

• To support answering questions - Colourful Semantics gives structure to sentences. A child can therefore focus on finding the answer to a question rather than how to communicate that.

• Develops a working knowledge of grammar - OK, so this may be an obvious one. But it really does help a child understand and use a range of word classes.

• Improves the length and variety of sentences used - as a child progresses through and understands Colourful Semantics more and more, so they can play around with the order of the sentence too. Does the ‘when’ card always have to sit at the front? Where else can it go?

• Develops narrative skills - as a child builds their sentence structure skills, their story writing skills will develop too as they begin to ‘see’ their story come to life and they begin to link ideas together.

What activities can I do with Colourful Semantics?

Almost every writing activity can be achieved with Colourful Semantics - though it can take some careful planning for some more focused activities. Here are five ideas to get you started.

Wacky sentences

Use one of the sentence frames of 5 or more elements to start you off and select words to attach to each of the sections.

Now challenge your child to rearrange the sentences and see what happens. Sometimes, you may get another good sentence. Other times, it may seem a little wacky (and hopefully make you laugh too!).

Example:

Original sentence - Tomorrow, the boy is baking a cake.

One change - The boy is baking a cake tomorrow. (normal change)

Two changes - The cake is baking a boy tomorrow. (wacky change!)

Role-play

This activity can be lots of fun with your child.

Act out an activity - for example, kicking a football. Ask your child to select the correct cards that describe what you are doing.

Repeat with your child acting out the activity and you selecting the cards.

Idea generating of word classes

On a grid, like the one below, challenge your child to write down 10 words in each section. If they find this easy, make it more difficult by putting restrictions on what words are allowed, e.g. in the orange section (subjects) are only allowed job titles (gardener, king, electrician, etc.) or you must only put synonyms of ‘run’ in the yellow section (verbs).

Colourful semantic dice

This is a variation on selecting the word cards from an envelope or choosing from the table. It involves having customisable dice with clear pockets on each side (like these here). The coloured dice can represent the different colours of word class and you can generate sentences by rolling each dice and inputting it into the sentence.

Comprehension activities

Comprehension activities involve asking and answering questions about a text or picture.

Using colourful semantics will help a child frame their responses. If they are asked a question about what did Alice follow to take her to Wonderland. A child may answer like this…

Our courses at Kinder Education, endeavour to be as inclusive as possible. That's why we use Colourful Semantics in our delivery and activities. To try one of our courses, click on our courses section to find out more.

Online courses