To be shocked that not even one y4 child knew the meaning of the word velvet?

[Utterlybananas333]

My sister is a teacher in a South London primary school, she is a year four teacher of around 30 8 to 9-year-olds. She was recently describing her disbelief over the fact that not a single child knew what velvet meant? There were some crazy guesses, and lots of children who thought it was cake (probably relating to red velvet). Is it just the fact that children and adults don't talk anymore? That nobody reads anymore? Or even watches educational TV programs? Would your child know?

surely if you live in a flat you're more likely to understand the word 'landing'?
is there not a staircase in your block?
doesn't it have multiple landings?

Ime most young people don't actually know much about computers, they might be good at editing videos/ uploading content to social media but not so much using a computer.

If they are Scottish they will be very familiar with turnips. 🤣 it’s a staple food up here. Goes with our haggis or mince and tatties.

We are having it with our steak pie tonight.

Not true, in Scotland at least.
Turnips (the kind you might refer to as 'swedes') are pretty much always available in the vegetable aisle.
People eat them throughout the year, not just for Burns Night.
Far more commonly consumed - and recognised by children (of all social classes) - than many other vegetables (eg aubergines, courgettes, fennel).
They were being sold for 5p/15p each recently, as part of the modern supermarket tradition of loss-leading pre-Xmas veg pricing.

Do you mean what many of us call swede, though? I’m sure I’ve read that in Scotland what we call swedes (big orange things, still popular) are called turnips, which to me are smaller, white fleshed, and usually with a partly purple skin.

I mean the smaller vegetable with the paler flesh.

I love turnips. I don’t really like swedes which are the more orange coloured veg which is often mashed together with carrots.

both are very available in Scotland but are not the same thing.

turnips are what we call neeps

I was told my left handed 5 year old couldn’t sew. She later got a first in contemporary design and art.

I haven't RTFT, so this may already have been pointed out, but it's, 'velveteen rabbit' not 'velvetine'. Velveteen isn't actually velvet, but it imitates it. I'd guess a lot of adults don't know what velveteen is...

Bit of a random thing to be shocked about. My kids would probably know because some of them have velvet dresses, but I don't exactly see it as a harbinger of doom not to know...

Does anyone remember the furore over the aqa language paper about 10 years ago? Think it was an article about waste and pictured a swede wrapped in plastic. Idea being, of course, that a swede has its own packaging. So, so many kids didn't get it, because they had no idea what a swede was.

To be fair, I'm not sure my own kids would know what one was.

I thought it was the same thing as a turnip.

A swede is also known as a Swedish turnip so it’s become known as a swede in some places and turnip in others (or as rutabaga in the US). Swedes are different from white turnips though as shown in the image below, so clarification is sometimes needed if you’re in a place (as I am) where swedes are usually just called turnips.

I think if you take an individual child the point gets a bit lost. Of course a child could read lots and still not know the word. But they’re more likely to. And across bigger samples of children, the link starts to show.

Are they? Only if it's the type of word featured frequently in children's books. Which I would argue is not the case.

Velvet wouldn’t need to ‘feature prominently’ for the word to be used. I’ve kind of made this point in the post you’ve quoted. It could easily be used descriptively about lots of things.

Well it could, but equally modern day children could read very widely without coming across it in any significant way at all.

Why would it need to be used frequently? It could be used once to describe, say, an animal’s fur, and stick in the child’s mind.

I’m only really saying that reading widens vocabulary, and this is especially going to show with words that aren’t encountered so much in everyday life, just like this one.

It’s surprising to me due to how popular velvet sofas are these days.

Because if they only come across it once or twice it may not stick.

I just don't get the focus on one specific word. It's not a useful indicator of anything.

The Velveteen Rabbit is still a classic.

He kind of knew. At first he thought it was a flower, then started talking about cloth and fabric and then described it pretty well.

Did you read my post correctly?

Im talking explicit teaching of vocabulary and not just topic or book specific. Even basic vocabulary, (I’m in EYFS think big/little…you’d be surprised how many kids don’t understand the definition of these words!!!) it’s increased all over the curriculum and there is more of a focus on it than ever before!

Not a bizarre comment but thankyou! I suspect you knew what I meant too but chose to be deliberately mean!

@mrpenny and I also didn’t say teaching vocabulary was scary, I said it’s scary how basic we have to go and yet despite low attainers on entry still have to achieve higher percentages of children meeting age related expectations, which I suspect you knew too!

I wear velvet, particularly round Christmas and New Year. It's very warm and feels luxurious.

I don’t think it’s particularly shocking really OP. Velvet isn’t a particularly popular fabric anymore so the word probably just isn’t used as much anymore. Now I think about it, I can’t remember the last time I said it, or even thought about it prior to this thread.