Y

Learning About Yellow

Y’s Story

Y introduces us to color. Ironically, colors don’t discriminate. That’s something people do. Yellow certainly doesn’t. There is a lesson here, if you choose to draw it out, or you can simply enjoy talking about your favorite color.

Keywords

Color, Shades: yellow, lemon, gold, sun shines down

Lesson Ideas

Vocabulary building, Metaphor, Nuance

Look for things around you that are yellow. Try to name them. Think of things that yellow could be a symbol for. In English speaking cultures it is often a symbol for cowardice. Do this again with all the other colors you can see around you.

Find a color to argue about. It may be one that doesn’t translate well into English, blue and green are like that in Vietnamese. It may be something people don’t perceive the same way, do you remember the dress?

Activity Sheet

Vocabulary Building, Metaphor, Nuance

This activity is very simple. Too simple? Can you help me make a more challenging version?

This is an acrostic using the word ‘yellow’. The illustrations are clues. Drawings of things that are yellow from the story. Some of them are also yellow in real life, lemons and leaves in the fall.

You could modify this by asking students to write in words for things they can see around them. Right now I am in my kitchen and I can see some yummy food. Advanced students might think of metaphors and have to explain them. Youth is yellow because it when we rise like the sun.

Give groups a blank sheet of paper and assign each one a color. Have them make an activity sheet for their color, or draw it on the board.

Some color words do not match between languages. There is even a language with no words for colors at all, only variations of light and dark. English may have too many words for colors. This video takes a peek at some of those words and the way men and women see color. Can you find examples of this in your language?