The Colourful Semantics approach was created by Speech and Language Therapist Alison Bryan. It uses colour coding to help children develop their sentence-building skills.
Colours are used to help children identify the important elements in sentences and learn how to put these together in the correct order.
Children are gradually taught to associate different ‘types’ of words with particular colours, in a step-by-step approach. The colour-coded elements can then be used to build sentences which range from simple combinations of two to three words, to longer and more complex sentences.
For example, the colour-coded strip above shows the colours used for the elements:
This prompt would be used with a child who was working on creating sentences. An example of this is: "The man (orange) is eating (yellow) an ice cream (green) in the park (blue)."
You can access Speech and Language support by calling Just One Number on 0300 300 0123. Our opening hours are 8am-6pm Monday-Friday (excluding bank holidays).
