Editorial comment.

Mantei, Jessica ; Kervin, Lisa ; Latham, Gloria 等

Dear Readers:

Our June 2010 theme for Practically Primary is Everyone's Talking! Talking helps children make sense of the complex world in which they live. As they struggle with powerful thoughts and the language to describe them, their discussions with others help synthesise ideas and develop new hypotheses. They learn to talk themselves into greater understandings. The authors who have contributed to this edition make room for exploratory talk on a daily basis and we thank them for the quality of their work and their generosity in sharing their wisdom with us.

Associate Professor Susan Hill sets the scene with what she identifies as a brief description of 'oral language from linguistic, social interactionist and cognitive development viewpoints'. We thank Sue for her time and insight into the important links between oral language and success in reading from the early years. This theme of oral language development is continued throughout this edition as authors describe the ways that explicit teaching of oral language supports meaning making.

We welcome back 10 Things; an important section of our journal that gives busy teachers a quick way to share the events and happening of their own classrooms with their peers. We encourage teachers (both young and old) to submit '10 ways I bring a variety of texts to my classroom' along with a photo to Lisa at lkervin@uow.edu.au for our October edition. We are excited to introduce a new regular feature to our journal. A non profit organisation, the Big Little Book Club originated in South Australia, extended to Queensland in 2007 and now provides national support, training and resources to a range of stakeholders in the pre school and early primary years settings. We extend a warm welcome to Leanne Williams and her team.

We hope you enjoy this edition focused on oral language, and further, we hope you will feel inspired to join in the conversation through your own contribution to the journal. We look forward meeting many of you at the ALEA/AATE conference in Perth--perhaps you will even bring along a draft manuscript!

Enjoy,

Jessica, Lisa and Gloria