Colourful Semantics
English · Reception–Year 4
Drag picture cards into the coloured boxes to build a sentence.
About the colourful semantics
A sentence strip across the top of the board: an orange Who? box, a yellow What doing? box, a green What? box and a blue Where? box. Under each box are four picture cards in the same colour, so the orange cards are the people and animals, the yellow cards are the actions, the green cards are the things and the blue cards are the places.
Drag a card into a box, or tap it and it goes straight to its own box. The sentence is written out underneath as it grows, with the little words a child often leaves out already in it: put in girl, eating, apple and park and the board says "The girl is eating an apple in the park."
A card can go in any box. If one ends up in a box of a different colour the board says where it goes ("eating" goes in the yellow box) and nothing is marked wrong.
Start with two boxes, Who and What doing, then add What, then Where. Next pictures brings up a new set of sixteen, and there are six sets, so there are plenty of sentences to make. Silly ones are allowed: a cow reading a cake on the bus is a sentence too, and a class laughing at it is a class telling you why it does not make sense.
How to use it on your whiteboard
- 1Choose 2, 3 or 4 boxes on the toolbar.
- 2Drag a picture into a box, or tap it to send it to its own box.
- 3Read the sentence underneath together. Tap a card in a box to put it back.
- 4Press Next pictures for a new set of sixteen cards.
- 5Press Mix it up for a silly sentence, and ask the class which card to swap to fix it.
- 6Turn Sentence off to hear the class say the sentence before the board does.
Questions
- What do the colours mean?
- Orange is Who, yellow is What doing, green is What and blue is Where. They are the colours colourful semantics has always used, so they match the strips and cards you may already have.
- What happens if a card goes in the wrong box?
- It stays there, and the board says which colour box it goes in. Nothing is marked wrong and there is no score.
- How many pictures are there?
- Ninety-six: six sets of sixteen, four for each colour. Next pictures goes through them in turn.
- Can I take the colours away?
- Yes. Turn Colours off and the cards go grey and the tray is jumbled, while the boxes keep their colours and questions. Children then have to ask each picture the box's question. A tap no longer sends a card to its box, so they drag it.