This study is descriptive-qualitative in nature, aims to examine, (1) How do the students construct the mathematical knowledge (i.e. statistics for elementary school) through classroom discussion?, (2) What role  are  the students and the teacher playing  in  the  discussion?,  (3) What impact do their contributions have in the construction of new mathematical knowledge? As subjects of this study are 21 fifth-grade students of SD Labschool Unesa. Data were collected by using observation sheets, and by videotaping the class lessons with three cameras. The results suggest that both the teacher and the students participated actively in small group discussion, and played the majority of roles offered in an effective discussion. At the end of the lesson, there was a whole class discussion that functioned as meaning negotiation – to facilitate the students to share solutions and strategies with the whole class, and promote student reflection on the different strategies. This suggests that even ‘difficult materials’ can be successfully constructed by fifth-grade students using classroom discussion. Therefore, it is suggested that classroom discussion can be chosen as one of learning methods in a mathematics classroom in which the teacher provides appropriate mathematics contents and uses productive strategies to facilitate the learning processes.

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