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Colourful Semantics

Colourful Semantics

 

Colourful semantics is an approach created by Alison Bryan. It is aimed at helping children to develop their grammar, by linking the structure of a sentence (syntax) and its meaning (semantics).

 

What is Colourful Semantics?

 

Colourful semantics reassembles sentences by cutting them up into their thematic roles and then colour codes them.

 

The approach has 4 key colour coded stages to 'show' the structure of a sentence.

 

There are further stages for adverbs, adjectives, conjunctions and negatives.

1. WHO - Orange

2. WHAT DOING - Yellow

3. WHAT - Green

4. WHERE - Blue

 

Why use Colourful Semantics?

There are a range of benefits to using this approach, including (but not limited to):

 

> Encouraging wider vocabulary;

> Making sentences longer;

> Helping children to answer questions or generate responses to questions;

> Developing use of nouns, verbs, prepositions and adjectives;

> Improving story telling skills;

> Can be transferred to written sentences and written language comprehension;

> Can be carried out individually or in small groups.