For improved student outcomes, teachers must integrate their knowledge about the curriculum, about how to teach it effectively and how to assess whether students have learnt it. Therefore, key tasks for initial teacher education are building curriculum knowledge, learning contextually appropriate ways to teach and how to use assessment for learning within each curriculum area. We interviewed four recent graduates who had demonstrated contrasting learning­-to­-teach profiles in an earlier quantitative study to understand how teacher education had assisted each of them to notice, recognise and respond to individual children's numeracy strategies. Their four stories indicate that teacher educators need to notice, recognise and respond to their student teachers with respect to their existing curriculum and pedagogical knowledge.