Jenni.Ingram@education.ox.ac.uk The ways in which teachers and students interact about mathematics in lessons can be more powerful in influencing learning than the materials and resources that teachers use. Interactional patterns structure all interactions and there are many such patterns that occur frequently in mathematics lessons. This paper focuses on one such pattern, the funneling pattern, which is widely discussed in the literature. Three distinct examples described in the literature as a funneling pattern are examined in order to examine the different roles sequences of closed questions can have and the opportunities these patterns can provide or constrains to students in the learning of mathematics.