In this paper, which was the first pilot of the FoNS framework, we analysed whole-class episodes from two year one lessons, one taught by a teacher in England and one by a teacher in Hungary. The two lessons, focused on the teaching and learning of number patterns, were managed in very different ways.
The English teacher, Sarah, used an interactive whiteboard to create a number grid on which she helped her class to explore different patterns, like 1, 4, 7, 10,…, each with a constant difference. In addition to enabling her students to understand number patterns, itself a FoNS category, she spent time helping her children to understand number symbols, vocabulary and meaning, along with opportunities to count and undertake simple arithmetical operations.
The Hungarian teacher, Klara, worked on a single task presented on the board. This involved many subtasks that addressed all FoNS categories except for estimation and systematic counting. These different activities focused on the relational properties of number, including Klara asking students for questions with the answer ten. Contributions included, it is the smallest two-digit number, it is the bigger neighbour of nine, it is the smaller neighbour of eleven, it is the smallest two-digit number, its digits add up to one and so on. Full details of the tasks and their FoNS-related potentials can be seen in the actual paper.
