# Handout 4.8: Color Wheel, Room Cards, and Pitch Sheet

Name: ______________________________ Date: ______________ Station: ______ Sub-team: ______

**Directions:** Day 1, fill in Part 1 while we go through the wheel, Part 2 while I mix, and Part 4 with your sub-team after you get your card. Day 2, use Part 4 to mix, Part 5 to pitch, and Part 6 goes in your project folder and stays there until Lesson 4.14. Keep this whole sheet. You will need the color words on the vocabulary check.

**The rule for Day 2, said once and held all period:** design, not food. Nobody eats, nobody licks a spoon, nobody takes materials from another station. Hands washed before and after. Everything stays on the parchment. Frosting goes in the trash bag, never in the sink.

## Word bank in other languages

**[Check with a native speaker before printing.]** These are working translations. The English word stays on every card, because the English word is the one you will see on a paint chip in a store.

| English | Turkish | Portuguese | Spanish |
|---|---|---|---|
| color wheel | renk çarkı | roda de cores | círculo cromático (rueda de colores) |
| primary color | ana renk | cor primária | color primario |
| secondary color | ara renk | cor secundária | color secundario |
| tertiary color | üçüncül renk | cor terciária | color terciario |
| tint (color plus white) | açık ton | matiz (tom claro) | tinte (tono claro) |
| shade (color plus a touch of dark) | koyu ton | sombra (tom escuro) | sombra (tono oscuro) |
| warm colors | sıcak renkler | cores quentes | colores cálidos |
| cool colors | soğuk renkler | cores frias | colores fríos |
| palette | palet | paleta | paleta |
| color scheme | renk şeması | esquema de cores | esquema de colores |
| mood | duygu (ruh hali) | ânimo (clima) | ambiente (estado de ánimo) |

Note for the teacher: the older vocabulary cards printed the Turkish short forms ANA, ARA, AÇIK, and KOYU with no diacritics. Both forms are fine to say out loud, and a student who learned the card word will recognize the longer noun here.

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## Part 1: The color wheel

**Teacher: print the wheel as a circle divided into 12 equal wedges, each wedge blank and outlined, with a short line running out from each wedge to a blank label box. Number the wedges 1 to 12 clockwise starting at the top. Draw one straight dashed line straight down the middle of the circle, top wedge to bottom wedge, and put the words WARM SIDE and COOL SIDE in boxes to the left and right of the circle for students to fill in.**

Fill in the wheel as we go:

1. Write the three **primary** colors in wedges 1, 5, and 9. Circle each one and write P beside it.
2. Write the three **secondary** colors in wedges 3, 7, and 11 (each one sits between the two primaries that make it). Write S beside each.
3. Write any two **tertiary** colors in the wedges that are left. A tertiary color is a primary plus the secondary next to it. Write T beside each.
4. Color or shade the warm side lightly and label both sides.

Answer these as we go:

The three primary colors are __________________, __________________, and __________________.

They are called primary because ____________________________________________________.

The warm colors are __________________, __________________, and __________________.

The cool colors are __________________, __________________, and __________________.

One tertiary color and how it is made: __________________ = __________________ + __________________

One place in a home besides a wall where color matters: ______________________________

## Part 2: Three things (fill in during the demo)

| The move | How you do it | What happened in the demo |
|---|---|---|
| Make a **secondary** color | Mix __________ + __________ | |
| Make a **tint** | Take a color and add __________ | |
| Make a **shade** | Take a color and add __________ | |

Why not black for a shade? _________________________________________________________

How much gel is "a touch"? ________________________________________________________

What warm colors do to a room: ____________________________________________________

What cool colors do to a room: ____________________________________________________

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## Part 3: The Room Cards

**Teacher: print one card per sub-team on card stock and cut them apart. Four Room Cards and two Challenge Cards make six panels, which is one per sub-team at three stations of seven. A third Challenge Card is printed below if you run a seventh sub-team or want the shared-bedroom version Lesson 4.8 names.**

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**ROOM CARD 1: THE BATHROOM**
**Mood: calm**
Who uses it: everyone in the house, one at a time, usually in a hurry in the morning.
What the room has to do: wake a person up, get them clean, and not feel crowded. It is the smallest room in the house and it has no window.
Your palette must include: one secondary color, one tint, one shade.
One thing to think about: a small room with no window feels smaller if the color is dark. Which side of the wheel helps?

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**ROOM CARD 2: THE KITCHEN**
**Mood: warm and welcoming**
Who uses it: a family of five, and whoever else walks in. Somebody is cooking in it almost every hour of the day.
What the room has to do: make people want to stay in it, and make food look good.
Your palette must include: one secondary color, one tint, one shade.
One thing to think about: restaurants pick their colors on purpose. Which side of the wheel makes people hungry?

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**ROOM CARD 3: THE GAME ROOM**
**Mood: energetic**
Who uses it: two middle schoolers and their friends, after school and on weekends. It is in the basement.
What the room has to do: feel awake, hold noise, and be the room people want to be in.
Your palette must include: one secondary color, one tint, one shade.
One thing to think about: energetic is not the same as loud. If every wall shouts, where does your eye rest?

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**ROOM CARD 4: THE HOME OFFICE**
**Mood: focused**
Who uses it: one parent who works from home at a desk for eight hours, on video calls half the day.
What the room has to do: help a person concentrate, and look plain behind them on a screen.
Your palette must include: one secondary color, one tint, one shade.
One thing to think about: what color behind a person on a call makes them easy to look at, and what color is distracting?

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**CHALLENGE CARD A: A BEDROOM FOR A GRANDPARENT WITH LOW VISION**
**Mood: restful, and easy to see**
Who uses it: a grandmother who has moved in with the family. She can see shapes and strong differences but not small details or soft edges. She uses a cane at night.
What the room has to do: feel restful enough to sleep in, and let her find the door, the edge of the bed, and the light switch without asking anyone.
Your palette must include: one secondary color, one tint, one shade, and one place on your panel where a light color meets a dark one on purpose.
**The family constraint you cannot ignore:** she has to be able to see where the floor ends and the wall begins, and where the bed edge is. A room of soft pale colors that all blend together is restful and useless to her.
One thing to think about: calm usually means pale. Pale everywhere removes the edges. How do you get both?

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**CHALLENGE CARD B: A BEDROOM FOR A NIGHT SHIFT WORKER**
**Mood: calm, and dark enough to sleep in daylight**
Who uses it: an uncle who works nights at a hospital. He gets home at 8 in the morning and sleeps until 4 in the afternoon. Two younger cousins are awake and loud in the house the whole time he is asleep.
What the room has to do: make a bright afternoon feel like night, and still not feel like a cave when he is awake in it.
Your palette must include: one secondary color, one tint, one shade.
**The family constraint you cannot ignore:** the sun hits this room's window straight on from noon to four. A pale, bright palette will bounce that light around the room.
One thing to think about: you need the room dark for sleeping and not depressing for the hours he is awake. Where on your panel does the dark go, and where does the light go?

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**CHALLENGE CARD C (optional third challenge): A SHARED BEDROOM FOR TWO KIDS WHO FIGHT**
**Mood: calm enough to sleep, interesting enough to want to be there**
Who uses it: a 12-year-old and an 8-year-old who share one room and argue about everything in it.
What the room has to do: give each of them something that is theirs, and still look like one room.
Your palette must include: one secondary color, one tint, one shade.
**The family constraint you cannot ignore:** whatever you give one side, the other side gets something equal. One color cannot win.
One thing to think about: can two halves of a room be different and still match? Which principle from Lesson 4.7 is that?

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## Part 4: The mixing plan (fill in Day 1, use Day 2)

Our room: ______________________________   Our mood: ______________________________

Who uses this room: _______________________________________________________________

| # | The color we want | How we mix it (start with what, add what) | What it is for on the panel |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | | | |
| 2 | | | |
| 3 | | | |
| 4 (if we have time) | | | |

Check the boxes before you start mixing:

[ ] One of ours is a **secondary** color (which one: __________)
[ ] One of ours is a **tint** (which one: __________)
[ ] One of ours is a **shade** (which one: __________)
[ ] Our palette is mostly **warm** / mostly **cool** (circle one), and that matches the mood because ____________________________________________

Our panel will show: the wall, the floor, and one piece of furniture, which is a __________________.

**Practice swatch:** before you paint the panel, put one dab of every color on your small plate and hold it next to the mixing plate. Is it the color you wrote down? If not, what is it missing?

## Part 5: The 30-second pitch sheet

You hold up the panel and talk for 30 seconds. Fill this in first and read it off the sheet if you want to. Everybody on the sub-team says at least part of it.

**The frame:**

"Our room is the ______________________, and the mood is ______________________.

The people who use it are ______________________, and they need it to ______________________.

We chose ______________________ for the ______________________ so the family can ______________________.

We made a tint by ______________________ and a shade by ______________________.

Our palette is mostly ______________ colors, which is the ______________ side of the wheel, and that fits this room because ____________________________________________."

Use these four words somewhere in your pitch and check them off as you rehearse: [ ] primary  [ ] secondary  [ ] tint or shade  [ ] warm or cool

**One question the class might ask us, and our answer:**

Q: _______________________________________________________________________________

A: _______________________________________________________________________________

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## Part 6: The color card (cut this off and put it in your project folder)

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**MY COLOR CARD.** Keep this. You use it in Lesson 4.14 when you paint your model, and Rubric 04 asks for a color scheme with a reason.

Name: ______________________________ Period: ______

| The color | What it is (primary, secondary, tint, shade, tertiary) | Where it goes in a room |
|---|---|---|
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |

My palette is mostly **warm / cool** (circle one).

The mood it makes: ______________________________

One sentence I can reuse: "I chose ______________________ because ______________________________________."

✂ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

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## Teacher key

**Part 1.** Primaries: red, yellow, blue. Primary because you cannot mix them from other colors, and every other color on the wheel comes from them. Warm: red, orange, yellow. Cool: blue, green, purple. One tertiary: red-orange = red + orange (accept any primary plus the secondary beside it: yellow-orange, yellow-green, blue-green, blue-purple, red-purple). Wheel positions: the standard order clockwise from the top is red, red-orange, orange, yellow-orange, yellow, yellow-green, green, blue-green, blue, blue-purple, purple, red-purple; on a 12-wedge wheel numbered clockwise from the top that puts red at 1, yellow at 5, blue at 9, orange at 3, green at 7, purple at 11, which is what the directions say. Accept a wheel that starts at a different primary as long as the three primaries are evenly spaced with the correct secondary between each pair. "One place besides a wall where color matters" answers to accept: a plate of food, a table setting for a holiday, a uniform, a bedspread, a car, a team jersey, a hospital room, a store window.

**Part 2.** Secondary: two primaries mixed. Tint: a color plus white. Shade: a color plus a touch of a dark color (in the lab, blue or brown; the state wording and the vocabulary card say black, and both are correct in theory; in frosting, black gel turns everything gray, which is why we use a touch of blue or brown). Not black because a drop of black gel goes gray, not dark. A touch is about a toothpick tip, not a drop. Warm colors make a room feel cozy, close, and full of energy, and they push appetite, which is why kitchens and dining rooms use them. Cool colors make a room feel calm, open, and quiet, which is why bathrooms, bedrooms, and offices use them.

**Part 4.** Score the plan on three things only: one secondary, one tint, one shade named with a real mixing method, and a palette that matches the card's mood. A plan that says "purple, with red and yellow" is the error to catch on Day 1; hand that team the wheel back.

**Part 5.** The pitch is Objective 3 on the lesson rubric. A Meets pitch names the family, the mood, and the function and uses the four words correctly. An Exceeds pitch ties a color to one specific person's need, which is what Challenge Cards A and B are designed to force.

**The two challenge cards, and the answers that work.** Challenge Card A: the strong answer keeps a calm cool tint on the big walls and puts a dark shade where an edge has to be seen, at the door frame, the baseboard, and the bed edge. Contrast at the edges, calm in the middle. A student who says "calm means pale, so everything is pale" has designed a room she will trip in, and that is the argument to have out loud. Challenge Card B: the strong answer puts the deepest shade on the window wall and around the window, where it absorbs the afternoon light, and keeps a warmer tint on the wall he faces when he is awake, so the room is not a cave. Either card can also earn credit for naming a non-color fix (a blackout curtain, a lamp with a warm bulb) as long as the color reasoning is there too. Challenge Card C: the strong answer uses one palette with two different accents, which is asymmetrical balance from Lesson 4.7.

**Printing notes.** One sheet per student for Parts 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6, printed double sided. One card per sub-team from Part 3, on card stock, cut apart, six cards for six sub-teams (four Room Cards plus Challenge A and B). Give the two challenge cards to grade 8 sub-teams where you can. Print the vocabulary word bank at the top of the sheet and also as a half-page card that sits at each station next to the English, so the words are in the hand during the lab.
