Jennie Bickmore-Brand is a lecturer at Curtin University, Perth, western Australia. Jennie has a background in teaching preparatory school to year 7. She has worked for many years as a language arts consultant. Her interest in mathematics and language was inspired by its frequent exclusion from teachers’ programs when programming their whole language classrooms. This led her to investigate a thesis through a masters program at Deakin University: "What can be learned from recent research in language arts that can be applied to mathematical teaching?"