How to teach colors in Spanish

Why this matters

English puts the color first, so a young student writes "el rojo gato" and keeps rojo even when the animal is una gata. On a worksheet, a sentence with the color in the wrong place looks as finished as a right one. The teacher has to wait until grading to find out who still writes the color first.

Colors in Spanish and where they go

The common colors in Spanish are rojo (red), azul (blue), amarillo (yellow), verde (green), negro (black), blanco (white), morado (purple), gris (gray), rosa (pink) and naranja (orange). Students need four rules to use them in a sentence:

• The color usually goes after the noun: un gato negro. Most Spanish adjectives follow the noun, unlike English (Spanish Grammar in Context, University of Texas at Austin).
• A color used as an adjective matches the noun in gender and number: falda roja, pantalones negros, carpetas amarillas (RAE, Diccionario panhispánico de dudas). Colors ending in -o have four forms: gato rojo, gata roja, gatos rojos, gatas rojas.
• Colors ending in -e or a consonant, such as verde, azul and gris, use one form for both genders and add -s or -es in the plural: la gata verde, los perros azules (University of Texas at Austin).
• Rosa and naranja are also the names of a flower and a fruit. The RAE accepts them unchanged in the plural (faldas naranja) or with an -s (faldas naranjas), and they only ever change for number, so a girl cat is una gata rosa (RAE).

In the Flint activity, each student invents a pet, describes it in one Spanish sentence, and Sparky draws exactly what the sentence says. Unlike a worksheet, the picture shows a wrong color word right away, and Sparky asks about the student's own sentence instead of correcting it.

Sparky gets Ruby to move her colors and fix their endings herself

Ruby ends up writing "una gata negra y amarilla" without being given the answer. Everyone in the class gets the same activity, and Sparky draws and questions each student's own sentences.

Sparky draws exactly what Ruby wroteSparky sends Ruby back to her own sentenceA right sentence gets a harder description

R

Ruby

Interest: Drawing made-up animalsStarting point: Puts the color first and never changes -o to -a

Ruby

tengo una blanco gata con alas

Sparky

Here's your winged cat, drawn in white, just like your Spanish words said! Look at your sentence: "tengo una blanco gata con alas." In Spanish, where does the color word go: before or after the animal word?

Ruby

wait shes not white she is supposed to be black!! after?? tengo una gata negro con alas

Sparky

Great fix putting the color after the noun! Your cat is a gata. Is that a el or una word, and what should the last letter of negro be to match?

Ruby

its una. so negra! tengo una gata negra con alas

Understanding check

Yes! Negra, perfect gender match! Ready for the next challenge? Try describing your cat with TWO colors, like she's black AND another color.

Ruby

tengo una gata negra y amarillo con alas

Sparky

Good try! You used y perfectly to connect two colors! Your cat is una gata, so what should the ending of amarillo be to match?

Ruby

oh amarilla. tengo una gata negra y amarilla con alas

Sparky

¡Perfecto! Amarilla, you nailed the gender agreement on both colors! Now let's try something trickier: can you describe MORE than one cat? Try writing a sentence with dos gatas (two cats) and both colors!

Moved her colors after the noun, matched both endings, then moved on to two cats

Ruby is an example student, and Sparky's replies are shortened.

What Flint did for Ruby

• When Ruby wrote blanco for her black cat, Sparky drew a white cat, and she caught the wrong color word herself.
• When she wrote "una gata negro", Sparky asked whether gata is an el or una word instead of fixing the ending.
• After both colors matched, Sparky asked her to describe two cats, so her next sentence needed plural colors.

A teacher can't do this by hand for 30 students, and Sparky does it in every student's chat.

The activity page shows who still puts the color first

While the class works, Needs attention shows the teacher which student is stuck and on which message. After three or more students submit, activity analytics lists what the class did well, where students went wrong, and a follow-up to practice next.

Set up the activity for free

The Draw My Pet activity is in Flint's public library, with Sparky's role, guidelines and greeting already written. Open it, select Use activity to copy it into a free Flint account, and assign it to a class. Students type their sentences in the chat, and Sparky's pictures appear right there, with no setting to turn on.

For more world language activities, see Flint for world language.