Two project researchers worked collaboratively with 10 Year 3-5 classroom teachers across nine schools in metropolitan and country regions of South Australia to answer the question: "What teaching strategies support all students to improve their numeracy outcome through the construction of meaningful understanding?". The research identified that there is no single aspect of teaching or no single environment feature that will, by itself, result in improved outcomes for all students. Rather, supporting students to think and work mathematically requires a combination of pre-arranged conditions and responsive teaching strategies. This paper concentrates on just one of the findings: namely that learning is confirmed as not solely an active personal construction of knowledge, but is also influenced by the social environment in which it takes place. Interactions between teacher and student/s, and amongst students themselves, encouraged students to think, verbalize and analyze their own views of mathematical and numeracy concepts.