A study of teacher and student talk in a mathematics classroom can help us understand the process of knowledge construction. In this paper we analyze and report student data that is part of the classroom discourse data of Teacher X’s ten consecutive mathematics lessons. From past analysis of Teacher X’s pedagogical actions over the ten lesson period we have found that the most typical pattern of her instructional cycle was composed of three consecutive segments: D (Demonstration), S (Seatwork) and R (Whole class review of written work). The analysis of the student classroom discourse data has shed light on (i) the opportunity for students to engage in public talk, (ii) the teacher’s orientation of classroom discourse (emphasis on process [conceptual knowledge] or product [procedural and or calculational knowledge]), and (iii)students’ critical stance to learning for example initiation of problems and questions. The results show that the lessons were highly structured with limited opportunity for students to engage in public talk. Furthermore the orientation of student talk was geared towards procedural and or calculational knowledge and students rarely initiated problems for discussion though they did ask for help when they encountered difficulties with their seatwork